


The Aftermath

by stereden



Category: Naruto
Genre: An Uchiha actually dealing with his emotion in a nearly healthy way, And then everything changes, Canon What Canon, Emotions, I suck at writing romance, Kagami lives, Kagami wants to know who he offended in a past life because this one is way too weird, M/M, Shisui lives, Soulmate AU, Tobirama is bad with feelings, badass old people, but he tries for Kagami, but not at writing the consequences of loss and grief it seems, continuation of blackkat's soulmate short, everything stays mostly the same until the invasion, have you SEEN Kagami's life? If he couldn't even swear about it he wouldn't have survived this long, he's just ... REALLY bad at expressing them, profanity warning, some guesswork for the timelines, they are mercenary killers/old enough to kill/old enough to drink/and definitely old enough tos wear, they have the survival instincts of suicidal lemmings, those who say Uchiha are bad with extreme emotions have clearly never dealt with tobirama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-13 06:14:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9110131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereden/pseuds/stereden
Summary: It's the most cruel thing in the world, Kagami thinks. To find out too late that you were destined to be together. And to have Tobirama's ghost here, to talk with him but never being able to touch him again?It's probably worse than losing him in the first place. Especially when the ghost of his soulmate starts to fade away.What is left for him after that? A clan on the verge of implosion. A Hokage that needs his help. A former teammate that seems to be trying to get rid of his clan.A village Tobirama left in their care.Kagami takes a deep breath, pushes his grief away and focuses on the living. They need him more than the dead need him to grieve.Or: What happened after blackkat's soulmate short (the one where your soulmate’s ghost haunts you when they die)





	1. The Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Soulmate Drabbles](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8001085) by [blackkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat). 



> Hello everybody!
> 
> This story was inspired by the work of the amazing blackkat, and is in fact the continuation of one of her soulmate shorts. It is written with her permission, and I hope she likes it!  
> She's the one who got me into rarepair hell, specifically in the Tobirama/Kagami pairing. The soulmate short brought me this plot bunny and wouldn't let me go until I wrote it.
> 
> Despite this being about the soulbonded pair of Tobirama and Kagami, this is not a primarly romantic fic (mostly because I suck at writing romance). Instead, it's an exploration of what the loss of one's soulbonded means, how the ghost affects the living one, and how Kagami in particular deals with this grief... and how it changes the story of Naruto.
> 
> It's going to be a multi-chaptered fic, and last at the very least until the Chunin Exams, so stay tuned for updates! And don't hesitate to tell me what you think of this!

He endures. That’s the only thing Kagami can say about the months that follows Tobirama’s death and the subsequent discovery that they were soulmates (how cruel, he thinks, that one only finds out when it is too late, because his other half is  _ dead _ , and it’s even crueler that he is  _ right there _ , and Kagami can’t even touch him, can’t even hold him, and all he wants is to bury his head in Tobirama’s chest, to feel his touch again, to feel his arms around him and know that everything will be alright. But he can’t, and it won’t.).

It hurts. His lover is always close by, hovering beside him, a usually silent shadow trying to provide him with whatever comfort he can.

But Tobirama has never quite known how to deal with emotions, and for all that he’s trying his best, some days his simple presence is enough to send Kagami spiralling into depression.

* * *

He keeps in touch with the others, of course. It's hard not to, when Saru is the Hokage and Danzo his shadow, when Koharu comes by every week for dinner and drags Homura with her. But it is Torifu who seeks him out when Kagami gets broody, the Akimichi somehow knowing exactly where he is hiding when he doesn't want to be found.

“Are you okay?” His teammate and best friend asks him as he sits down next to him on the floor of the history branch of the Shinobi Archives.

Kagami looks at him, then buries his face in his knees again. It’s been over a year, now, and it still hurts just as much.

“Obviously not” Torifu sighs, throwing an arm around his shoulders and dragging him in a half hug. “Tobirama-sensei, if you're here you better find somewhere else to be for the next few hours.”

Kagami stiffens, then relax and lets out a watery laugh.

“I should have expected you to notice. He's not here, by the way.”

“Damn right you should have. Though, to be fair, I don't think the others have. Except Koharu, but Koharu knows everything.”

The Akimichi turns to face his friend.

“I always thought fate was cruel, you know?” He whispers. “The only way for someone to know their soulmate is to either die or for the other person to die. A happy ending is impossible. How can you know if the person you're in love with is truly the one for you? How can you know if one day you're not going to wake up next to your significant other with the ghost of your soulmate watching you?”

That exact scenario had happened to one of the girls who had gone through the academy with them. The result had been ugly, to say the least.

“I never gave that much thought to soulmates before” Kagami confesses. “Except maybe in the sense that it would be neat to be able to check on you guys after my death… I… I never expected to be the one left alive. “

Tobirama had been the Hokage, the god of water jutsu, the protector of Konoha. Kagami was a good jounin, a bit of a hot head, and fiercely loyal. Despite being a good decade and a half younger than him, Kagami had fully expected to die first (probably in defence of his lover and Hokage) and had been at peace with the idea.

Losing Tobirama because of his stupid suggestion of a bait… that had never factored in.

“The worst part is that he's _ here _ , and I can see him and talk to him, but at the same time he's _ not _ . He's see through, his voice sounds so distant, and his presence is muffled.”

Kagami might not be a sensor on par with his lover, but he had grown used to basking in the older man's chakra, and now what little he can feel is distorted, barely there, and that hurts as much as not being able to touch.

“I can't feel him anymore” Kagami’s voice breaks slightly. “Can't feel him, can't touch.him, can't even talk to him unless we're alone. Can’t even talk to anyone about him because they  _ don’t know _ . Most of my clan still hates him, is still convinced that he hated all Uchihas because of Madara. And… we didn’t tell anyone. It was still too soon. It was war. We wanted… We wanted something to be ours. Just us. We were going to tell you guys, once the war was over.”

Torifu nods, because the Akimichi had always been far more perceptive than people gave him credit for.

“And now the war is over and he’s  _ gone. _ He’s gone, except he’s not, and sometimes I catch myself thinking it would be better if he  _ was _ entirely gone, because at least then I could… I could grieve, properly. But everytime I hear his voice, or see him in the corner of my eyes, I keep hoping. Hoping it was all a bad dream, that that mission never happened, that he never walked to his death because of my stupid suggestion of a bait!”

He slams his fist into the ground, uncaring of the pain.

“It wasn’t your fault” Torifu points out quietly. “And if you hadn’t pointed out that Koharu’s plan wouldn’t have worked, I would have. And Sensei too. He chose to give us time to escape. To give  _ you _ time to escape, Kagami. And you would have done the same, for him and for us, but he pulled rank and we both know it. It was  _ his choice _ .”

Kagami’s voice is small when he answers.

“I know” he says, quietly. “He’s told me so, repeatedly. But it is not something I will ever forgive myself for.”

Torifu squeezes his shoulder. “I know that. And I know how hard it can be to have a glimpse of what could have been, reminding you that it won’t ever be.”

Torifu’s soulmate had died when he was sixteen. She had been fifteen, a civilian caught by a stray jutsu two villages over. They had never met before. She stayed with him for a few months, before choosing to move on.

“But you had these moments together, short as they were. And even if it’s not the same, you can still talk to him. It won’t ever be the same again - but that doesn’t mean that it won’t ever be  _ you _ again, the two of you against the world. I’m here if you need someone to talk to, always. But he’s there too, and while it’s not everything it was and could have been… maybe it can be enough for now."

They stay like that for what seems like hours, hidden in the shinobi archives, and when they emerge, Kagami is a bit more settled. And when Tobirama shows up in his room that night, looking… awkwardly hesitant, Kagami smiles through his tears.

It won’t ever be the same again. But maybe, just maybe, it could be enough for him to hold on until his time comes.

* * *

And so he endures, does his best to pull through, and it seems to be working, until the Clan starts hounding him about heirs.

He understands why, of course. He is a good shinobi, a solid jounin, but more than that he possesses a unique form of his clan fabled dojutsu.

(His sharingan  _ changed _ after Tobirama’s death, and for all he tried to hide it it wasn’t long before the rest of the Clan found out. There are new powers at his disposal now, Izanagi and Kamui and Susanoo and Amaterasu, and the Clan lauds him as one of their best shinobi, the second coming of Madara, the crazy excepted, and all Kagami can think is that he would give it all back, would rip his eyes out himself for just one more day with Tobirama).

He understands, but that doesn’t mean that he feels anything but utter loathing at the very idea of taking a wife. 

Even  _ before _ , before he admitted to himself that he was more than just slightly smitten with the Second Hokage, before he worked up the courage to do something about it, before  _ Kagami _ and  _ Tobirama _ became  _ KagamiandTobirama _ , he had never felt any particular attraction towards women. He liked them well-enough, had even slept with a few, but he had always had a marked preference for men. (Tobirama, he knew, had never felt particularly attracted to  _ anyone _ , no matter their gender, and that had made the fact that he had chosen  _ Kagami _ all the more important - ‘ _ I’m neither heterosexual nor homosexual’  _ The Senju had told him once, when Kagami had wondered. _ ‘But I might be Kagami-sexual’ he had added, before flipping him so that the older man was on top, and there had been no more talking for a while). _

And now that Tobirama is  _ dead _ , lost to him even though his spirit remains, Kagami finds that he would much prefer to remain celibate.

But no one in the Clan knows about his soulmate, knows that the one they call their rising star was the lover of the head of their rival clan. No one in the Clan even knows he prefers the company of his own gender, and so they persists in throwing women at him left and right.

“Maybe you should” Tobirama tells him once, quietly, as Kagami is lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling after yet another ‘coincidental’ meeting with the daughter of one of the Elders.

“No.”

A sigh.

“Koi…” the endearing name, so very rarely used, slips out of Tobirama’s lips like a plea, and Kagami freezes.

“You can’t ask me to do that, Tobirama.”

They stay silent for a while, before the Senju breaks the silence.

“You always wanted children, Kagami” He whispers.

It’s true. They hadn’t talked about the future much, in the too-short time they had had together, because there had been a war going on and they knew better than to jinx themselves (for all the good that it did them, in the end), but they had touched upon the subject. Mostly because, with Hashirama gone and neither of his children or grandchildren inheriting the Mokuton, people expected the Second Hokage to continue the Senju line, to raise another plant-user for the protection of Konoha, and the last thing Kagami had wanted was to make life more complicated for his lover. But Tobirama had set him straight. He wanted children, yes, and so did Kagami, but that did not mean they had to sacrifice their relationship to have them. War makes for a lot of orphans, and they could always use a surrogate if they ever wanted children of their own blood. Kagami had let himself dream about that, had imagined a future where he and Tobirama were able to be together in public, where children would run through the disused rooms of the Hokage mansion and make the place a  _ home _ rather than just a  _ house _ , where Uchiha and Senju would lose the wariness that dogged their step after seeing one of the Uchiha’s worst detractors living a happy life with a prodigy of the Clan.

And then Kumo had happened, and all his dreams had died with Tobirama.

In the end, Kagami gives in, and he is married a few months later. He doesn't love Chikara (a pretty young woman who made it to jounin), but she doesn't love him either, though they get along well enough. Tobirama stays away, for a while, a mutual decision to protect them both from hurt. Kagami and his new wife share a bed long enough to conceive a child, and then sleep in separate rooms. They had both agreed that, as long as they were discreet about it, the other could have other lovers.

Kagami never does, but in the darkness of his room he can talk with Tobirama without fear of being overheard, and that is… enough.

* * *

His son is born in winter, a boy with dark hair and dark eyes, a perfect little Uchiha. Kagami is smitten on sight, loves Shuichi as soon as he holds him in his eyes, but part of him aches at the thought that his son is not theirs.

Oh, he sees how Tobirama hovers around the little boy, watches out for him, and he knows without his soulmate needing to say it that the Nidaime loves the boy just as much. But Shuuichi can't see him, doesn't know that he even exists, and Kagami knows that hurts Tobirama.

(Shinigami knows it hurts Kagami too.)

* * *

 

Time flies, and Shuichi grows up under the watchful eyes of his parents (roommates who have grown to be friends through their shared disdain for the clan elders and love for their son) and of the ghost of the second Hokage. He enters the Academy, and when he graduates (at age ten, for they are at peace and no longer forcing six years old to fight a war, but not at age twelve because tensions are rising again and war is looming in the horizon), Kagami is the first to congratulate him even as his heart breaks at the idea of sending his child into danger.

The peace holds out for a few more years, but twenty years nearly to the day after Tobirama’s death, war breaks out again and it’s just as ugly as Kagami remembers.

He fights side by side with Torifu once more. Watches as Saru’s students decimate their enemies. Watches as Koharu fells her opponent with genjutsu and senbon and Homura leads them into his deathly traps. Watch as Shuichi tears through people, sharingan wheeling in his eyes.

He watches as Chikara falls against a Suna puppeteer, and he watches as her white-haired student avenges her. He watches as children are once again sent to the battlefield, and he watches Tobirama’s grief as his young grand-nephew doesn’t come back from one of his missions. 

He watches as Orochimaru fractures under the pressure, and he watches as Tsunade breaks when her lover dies shortly after her little brother.

The Densetsu no Sannin, Hanzo called them. Kagami can’t help but think that, while they will always be legendary, the trio will soon crumble to pieces.

And suddenly the war is over, and each side has to bury their dead.

The memorial stone is starting to get crowded, Kagami thinks sadly, as he stands in the crowd with the other shinobi to honour their fallen comrades.

* * *

His son comes to find him after the funeral, and his eyes have changed to reflect Kagami’s own. His best friend and teammate, a quiet Aburame boy, died in front of him during an ambush, and now he has the Mangekyo Sharingan. Kagami bites back his bitterness, ignores Tobirama’s worried glances, and teaches his son how to use his new eyes.

Shuichi marries a clan’s elder granddaughter a few weeks after the war. His own son Shisui is born a year later, and Kagami feels old. He’s only 42, but for a shinobi this is already a long life.

Tobirama is having trouble materialising, now. He tries, but most of the time he is barely there, a wisp of smoke that disappears if his concentration breaks. It’s like losing him a second time, and it hurts. Kagami didn’t think he could still hurt so much.

Chikara is dead, Tobirama is disappearing, Shuichi is focusing on his own family and Kagami is restless. He can feel the next war brewing, and he throws himself into his training, into increasingly dangerous missions, and when Hiruzen finally summons him to his office, he is not surprised.

* * *

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?!” The Hokage asks him, eyes locked into his own, with no fear of his sharingan.

Kagami shrugs.

“I’m trying to be strong enough not to lose anymore of the people I love.” He retorts. “If I die in the process? Well, too bad.”

Sarutobi sighs.

“I know you lost your wife, Kagami” he says gently. “But that does not mean you can throw your own life away.”

“Cut the crap, Saru” Kagami snorts from where he stands in front of the Hokage. The ANBU have been dismissed, and a quick check with his dojutsu has confirmed the presence of no listening device or seals. “We both know that my recklessness began over twenty years ago, and while Chikara’s death probably made it slightly worse, it wasn’t the trigger. So tell me what you really want from me, because we both know that it’s not to chastise me over my life choices.”

The Hokage sighs.

“I want you to join ANBU” He says bluntly. “You are one of the best shinobi in the village, and I need you by my side.”

Kagami looks at him. Really looks. Sees the bags under his eyes, the stress lines on his face.

“There is more to this, isn’t it?”

Hiruzen takes a deep breath. “Danzo” He says, and Kagami stills. Because Danzo is his genin teammate, but he hasn’t talked to him in years and every time he sees him the other man seems to avoid him. To avoid all Uchihas, in fact, and the clan is starting to feel it too.

And it hurts, because Kagami honestly thought they were friends, but apparently Danzo doesn’t, is still wary and distrustful of the Uchihas as a whole, and part of him can’t help but wonder if it’s his fault, if this is because it was his idea to have someone act as a bait.

Danzo is working in the shadows, Hiruzen explains. He is building his own organisation, Root, to do the missions Konoha can’t afford to do publically. But at the same time he is building his own networks, making his own plans, and his vision of Konoha and of the Will of Fire does not align with Hiruzen’s. He is more aggressive, belligerent even, and Hiruzen is worried.

Kagami takes a breath. Lets it out. Looks behind Hiruzen where he can barely perceive Tobirama’s force.

“If I do this” he tells the Hokage “I do this my way. I want a ghost op.”

Hiruzen stills.

“I’m tired, Saru” Kagami goes on. “Tired of the clan hounding me about taking another wife and having other children to pass my Mangekyo on. My son is grown, with his own family now, he doesn’t need me to hold his hand. And if I’m going to be keeping an eye on Danzo, I don’t want them to be affected. I can keep him safe from behind a mask, even if it means they think I’m dead.”

“If you do this” Sarutobi points out quietly. “The only people who will know you’re still alive will be me and the ANBU commanders.”

The Uchiha snorts. “As if I have ever been able to keep something from Torifu and Koharu. That was a given.”

He can feel Tobirama’s worry, but he ignores it. Protect your precious people. Protect the village. Protect the Clan. That has always been his mantra.

* * *

 

Uchiha Kagami dies shortly before the start of the third Shinobi war, in a mission to rescue a group of children from slavers. From his ashes, Raven rises, and he watches from the shadows as his son carves his name into the memorial stone with a grim face while his little grandson cries quietly in his mother’s arms.

  
  



	2. The long, lonely years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been three years since the last time Tobirama managed to manifest in the real world, and Kagami stops hoping.
> 
> But there is a new Kage that needs to be rescued from sleepless nights of fuinjutsu research, and an old gening teammate that is fanning the flames of the burning embers the Uchiha clan has become, and his grandson is desperatly trying to put out the flames, so Kagami stops hoping and starts acting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here you go, chapter 2 of this fic is out! Chapter three is in the works, and should bring us to the chunin exams and the invasion!

Kagami remains in the shadow of the Hokage, protecting him and watching Danzo, and then Tsunade leaves the village, unable to deal with the grief of her brother’s death, of her lover’s death. Jiraya takes a genin team, and Orochimaru rarely leaves his labs ever since his own students died in the second war. 

And then Uzushiogakure falls, shortly after sending the Uzukage’s granddaughter to Konoha to become the next jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi as Mito is aging and weakening. Uzushiogakure falls to the combined forces of Mist, Earth and Cloud, and Konoha is too late to help them and that is how the third Shinobi war starts.

This war lasts longer, long enough for his grandson to graduate, become genin and then chunin, long enough for Jiraya’s students to become jounin. He tries to keep an eye on Shisui as much as his duties permit, tries to keep an eye on the entire clan as much as he can without suspicions, and he clenches his fists, hidden in the shadows behind the Hokage, when the young boy (only ten years old, and a chunin already, a battlefield promotion after his sensei's death), reports with a shaken voice that the mission was a success, but that one of his teammates, a Nara boy, had died taking a blow meant for him.

Another generation with the mangekyo sharingan, Kagami seethes. Is his line cursed? He wonders. He would have spared Shisui this pain, if he could, but all he can do now is witness it in silence.

It's been three years since the last time Tobirama managed to manifest in the real world, and Kagami stops hoping. 

He focuses on his task instead, on the war and on Danzo’s actions, and when the war ends Kagami is the one who alerts Saru on the actions of the one who was once his prized student.

The situation with Orochimaru is complicated. The man fractured after the death of his young students during the second war, one of them Tsunade’s little brother, and no one had been there to catch him. No one had even tried, and Kagami is aware that this is on them. It's on Saru for not keeping an eye on him, it's on Tsunade for leaving without telling her teammate that she didn't blame him for her brother's death, it's on Jiraya for not making sure Orochimaru had someone to fall back on, and it's on Konoha who will always have a complicated relationship with geniuses, simultaneously applauding them for their exploits and shunning them for the risk they represent. And Orochimaru, who is far smarter than perhaps he should be, whose looks are out of place in the village and who has always been more interested in experiments than in forming bonds with people, pays the price.

That is not to say that the man is simply a victim. No, the Sannin made his own choices and dug his own grave, and even though they let him down, they weren't the ones who encouraged him to experiment on children.

(Danzo was, Kagami finds out, but there is no proof to present to the council and so they have to wait until he makes a mistake, until he oversteps his bounds, before they make their move. But his former teammate is smart and shrewd, and he covers his tracks well.)

Orochimaru flees Konoha, and Saru let's him go, much to Kagami's ire.

“I know he was your student, Saru, but something tells me this is going to come back to bite you in the ass” he tells his Hokage bluntly.

But what is done is done, and there's nothing he can do to change the outcome. The war is still going on, Iwa emboldened by Orochimaru's defection, and it is not until Jiraya’s student decimates nearly a thousand enemy nins in retaliation for the death of one of his student that it ends.

Kagami silently grieves for the young Uchiha. Obito had been one of the most tolerable member of the clan, and one of the most outgoing too. His enthusiasm had been a refreshing breath of air in the stuffy compound, and Shisui had been close to the boy.

“Guess it's true, what they say” the Sandaime’s ghost anbu mutters. “It's always the good ones that leave you first”

The clan is furious about the sharingan now in the last Hatake's head. Kagami feels the boy has already lost enough, what with his father being driven to suicide by the village he fought so hard to protect, and he keeps an eye on the boy in memory of Chikara's student.

* * *

It's been six years now since he last felt Tobirama's presence. He knows soul ghosts were not supposed to linger for so long, few lasted longer than a few months and he had had over twenty years with his, but it doesn't make it hurt less.

_ How many times _ , he wonders,  _ I am going to have to grieve for you? _

* * *

 

Namikaze Minato, Jiraya's prized student, becomes the Yondaime and Saru retires. Danzo is still scheming in the shadows, but there's nothing they can prove and he seems more wary of the new Hokage than of the last.

Kagami is officially introduced to the new kage on the night of his intronisation. Namikaze is surprised, but names him his personal bodyguard anyway. (And proceeds to pick his brain for everything he can remember from Tobirama's seals, and Mito’s before him.)

As a result, Kagami suddenly finds himself learning an entire new skill set, and he finds himself surprisingly good at it. The Sharingan helps, a bit, but he  _ understands _ seals in a way very few can, leading to Minato playfully asking him more than once if he’s not actually part Uzumaki.

(It’s something that reminds him of Tobirama, of late nights spent sharpening his sword and kunais while his lover worked tirelessly on his latest project.)

* * *

It's not hard to like the blond. He is absolutely devoted to his people, head over heels for the last Uzumaki, and a total mother hen to his last remaining student, the lone kunoichi having died shortly before the end of the war.

(Kiri tried to make her a jinchuuriki and set her loose on the village, but she was braver than most and chose to die instead. Kagami admires her for it, and hates her for choosing suicide by teammate as her way to go, because the Hatake kid is  _ seriously _ messed up, and could have used one of his few precious people not dying right in front of him  _ again _ .)

Namikaze is also, Kagami finds out, a total  _ dork  _ when it comes to sealing and jutsus. After the third time the Uchiha has to wake his lauded boss at three am after he fell asleep writing, he gives up and takes to calling the man's fiancée when it looks like he's going to pull an all-nighter again.

Uzumaki Kushina is very different from his late sensei, and yet so similar it hurts sometimes. Mito had been quiet and posed, dignified and calm, yet should anyone threaten those she held dear, they found out that the quiet surface of the water hid fierce currents, the raging whirlpools of her homeland. She had used seals as her main weapons, augmented with powerful water jutsus and glowing chakra chains. Kushina is wild and loud, full of energy and movement. Her temper flares high and often, and her laughters rings through the village just as often as her exasperated screams. She’s all whirlpools and typhoons, agitated waves protecting those who live beneath the sea. Her seals are less powerful, less complicated than Mito’s, because there is no one left to teach her what should have been her birthright, but she makes up for it by using a wide range of them, creating them on the spot to fit the situation. She wields a brush in one hand and her chains in the other, and earns herself the moniker Crimson Sorrow as she cuts through those who condemned the village of her birth.

They are easy to like, Minato and Kushina, and soon enough Kagami finds himself spending more and more time with them.

The only thing that brings him is more heartbreak, because someone attacks them when Kushina is giving birth and he loses them both. He loses them both, to an attacker he tries to catch without success, who phases through his attacks as though he is intangible, and whose visible eye behind the mask sports a spinning shuriken on a red background.

Kagami is  _ livid _ , he is  _ furious _ because that means that an Uchiha is behind this, a rogue one because he knows his clan, has watched over it for the past decades and knows that none of them could have done this. The only one who have awakened the Mangekyo beside him are Shuichi and Shisui, and by the time Sarutobi steps in as Hokage again, Kagami’s son has taken his last breath in the hospital after facing the bijuu head on to protect civilians.

He is one of the very few Uchiha casualties, and the rumors start again.  _ Madara Uchiha could control the beast _ , they say.  _ None of them tried to fight it off _ , another mentions.  _ Where were they when we needed them? _ a third one accuses.

They were guarding the civilians, Kagami wants to scream. Protecting those who could not protect themselves, guarding the future generations.

But there’s nothing he can do, because he is  _ dead _ , for all intents and purposes, and ghosts have no say on the matters of the living.

Except when they do, except when the Hokage grows warier of Danzo, suspects him of spreading the rumors and agitating the whispers, and children are disappearing from orphanages again and this time there is no Orochimaru around to blame. Except when the Hokage needs someone else to watch Danzo, to get close enough to him to gather proof, and except when the Hokage decides that  _ Kagami’s grandson is their best bet at getting someone inside Danzo’s organisation. _

Shisui has already been approached by Danzo, multiple times, and now Saru wants to use the barely thirteen years old to try and catch Kagami’s old team-mate in the act.

Once again, Kagami stands in front of his lover’s student and does not move until the Kage agrees with his conditions.

* * *

 

The next day, Shisui shows up in the secret training ground Kagami and Tobirama built decades ago, protected from preying eyes, ears and jutsus alike, and sees his grandfather for the first time in eleven years.

To say he is not happy with the deception is an understatement, but they come to an understanding relatively quickly.

(Mostly because Shisui is not an idiot, and it’s bleedingly obvious that Kagami wants nothing more than to make sure his last living relative does not die a stupid death because of a man he once considered a friend.)

For months, they train together, a shadow clone of Shisui making appearances in the village to keep the charade up. Kagami teaches his grandson everything he can think of, seals, jutsus, katas, everything. He focuses on seals, though, because Danzo is an  _ asshole, _ but he’s a  _ crafty  _ assholes and what little Kagami has managed to glean on his former teammate is that he is very interested in control and silence seals, and  _ like hell _ he’s going to let Shisui’s get caught by this.

Shisui is snapped up by ANBU shortly after their training ends, and then by Ne. He’s a high profile ninja, so Danzo thankfully can’t make him disappear or go through his intense re-programming. He gets the odd non-sanctioned mission, and is asked to report on the situation inside the clan, but the Hokage asks the same of him as part of his ANBU duties.

* * *

Resentment is growing inside the clan, and it gets steadily worse. Cantoned to their compound, separated from the rest of Konoha, the Uchiha respond to the growing uneasiness of the village by secluding themselves even more, and it does not take long for rumors of a coup to rise. It’s only whispers, inside the clan, but when Shisui reports to the Hokage his face is ashen.

He doesn’t understand.

Neither does Kagami, to be  honest, because for all that Uchiha Fugaku is an arrogant prick with a stick up his ass, he is also a (mostly) reasonable man. For him to spearhead a possible insurrection…

It’s been six years since Minato’s death, and Uchiha Itachi joins ANBU. He’s young, the youngest ANBU ever, younger even than Hatake. Only twelve, with eyes much too old for his body and soul that yearns for peace. The lauded prodigy of the Uchiha clan, the son of the clan head, and yet the first time he is placed on rotation in the Hokage’s office, where no one can spy on them, the boy drops to one knee in front of the leader of the village and tells him everything.

He doesn’t want more bloodshed, he says. He’s seen enough of it (and Kagami remembers that Fugaku took the kid with him, all of five, during the last few days of the war, to see the worst of the battlefields. He has rarely wanted to kill someone more than now.), he says, and he doesn’t want his brother to grow up tainted by blood.  _ Not like I am _ , goes unsaid, but not unheard.

* * *

Itachi and Shisui are close, and Kagami can see the worry eating them alive behind their well-maintained facades.

They have a plan, Shisui tells him one night, in the training ground that has now become theirs. They are going to use his eyes’ ability, the Kotoamatsukami, to manipulate Fugaku and put an end to the coup, without a single drop of blood being shed.

(It’s the ultimate genjutsu, one so powerful it can change a person’s  _ nindo _ , their ideals, their dreams and hopes. Kagami doesn’t have it, and neither did Shisui’s father, but he knows there will be a price for it’s use. Most likely Shisui’s eyesight, maybe even his ability to be a ninja. He also knows that it’s a price his grandson will willingly pay if it avoids the civil war threatening to break out.)

(They should have known it was too good to be true.)

The next evening, a frantic Uchiha Itachi barges into Kagami’s secret appartement, a barely breathing Shisui in his arms and the black pinwheel of the Mangekyo swirling in his eyes. The young man is drenched, his eye sockets are bleeding and empty, and there’s poison coursing through his veins.

Kagami has never been more thankful for the medical jutsus he had learnt shortly after getting his sharingan, and practiced until he could do them in his sleep, and his hands are glowing green before he even comprehends what must have happened.

(He should be surprised that Itachi knows about him, knows where he lives, but he’s seen the kid around Shisui enough not to be. For all that the Uchiha heir is emotionally stunted, it’s clear as day that he has imprinted on Shisui in some way, has made the older boy his anchor, the center of his universe, with only his little brother Sasuke coming a close second in his mind. And for all that Shisui teases his clansman, for all that he rants about his robot-like behaviour, the fact is that Itachi is the first person Shisui looks for when he comes back from a mission, the first person he willingly spends his downtime with since the death of his teammate, and Kagami is not blind.)

(He only hopes that they won’t have to find out the hard way that they are meant for each other, that they will get more time together than he and Tobirama did.)

(Given their current situation, it doesn’t seem likely.)

It was Danzo, a hysterical Itachi babbles, Shisui was going to use Kotoamatsukami against Fugaku, and Danzo did not think it would be enough, and then he attacked Shisui and took his right eye. Kagami’s grandson managed to escape and find Itachi, but he had been poisoned, and he wanted Itachi to have the Mangekyo so that he could deal with the coup, and he didn’t want Danzo to get his left eye, and so Shisui had  _ taken his own eye out _ and given it to Itachi before jumping in the Naka river.

His grandson, Kagami decides through gritted teeth as he extracts the poison, is a fucking self-sacrificing noble idiot, and he’s going to kill him himself once this shit is over. A hand extended at Fugaku’s eldest son gets him Shisui’s left eye, which he reimplants using the procedure developed by Minato’s student, Nohara Rin, when she had to transplant Uchiha Obito’s eye into Hatake Kakashi.

(That’s it. He’s going to drill medical ninjutsu and procedure in his grandson’s head until the boy can recite it in his sleep. Gouging out his own eye with his bare hands? After having the other one ripped out? It’s a miracle he didn’t go into shock after the first one, much less the second one.)

(He’s going to have a long talk with the boy about his severe lack of self-preservation instincts. Sacrificing oneself for the sake of others might sound good on paper, but usually has the opposite effect on whoever is left behind. Survivor’s guilt is a bitch and a half, and Kagami knows what he’s talking about.)

Itachi is still talking, still hysterical, and Kagami is reminded once again that the boy is still just a kid. He’s thirteen years old, for log’s sake.

There’s someone else, Itachi says. Someone who has been lurking around at clan meeting, agitating the clan, and yet no one seems to find his presence weird, or remember him afterwards. He approached him already, talking about the clan’s action, and Itachi suspects the man (definitely an Uchiha, from the feel of his chakra, but not one he can recognize, and there’s something  _ off _ about him) wants to slaughter the whole clan because he can barely hide his killing intent, and now Danzo tried to kill Shisui and he wants to kill the clan too and take the Sharingan and…

Kagami hits the kid with a sleeping gas and lays him down on his ratty couch. Then he runs a hand through his curly hair, looks at his unconscious grandson where he lies, covered in blood, but no longer bleeding out, on his bed, and sighs.

And then he plans. He seals his apartment, locking the two kids (and they are both kids, no matter their rank) inside and making sure no one could get to them. He plants a false body, identical in every point to Shisui, in the Naka river and leaves a suicide note in Shisui’s handwriting. He leaves a clone to guard Kushina’s boy (because he doesn’t trust most of the ANBU, and Hatake is out on a mission and he’ll be damned if anything happens to the boy) and waits until ‘Shisui’s’ body is found to make his way to the Hokage’s office, after collecting a still slightly shaking Itachi who had woken up from his unwilling nap.

“Kagami” Saru starts, pale and weary and guilty, and the Uchiha can’t hold back his snarl. Koharu and Torifu are there too, still the heads of ANBU despite their age, and they look just as furious as he does.

“Spare me your apologies, Hiruzen” He says, activating the secrecy seals he and Minato painstakingly installed in the office with Kushina’s help. “Danzo attacked my grandson to prevent him from preventing the coup, and there’s a rogue Uchiha agitating the rest of the clan. And from what I’ve gathered, both of them would like to slaughter the clan and take their eyes, so you better have a plan in mind to at least protect the innocent ones, or I’m taking Danzo’s head myself!”

From the looks of it, Torifu and Koharu would join him if he does so.

* * *

 

As it turns out, there is a plan. A pretty fucking shitty plan, but a plan nonetheless, and he really wants to strangle Itachi because the brat came up with it knowing what he would have to do.

There is going to be a slaughter, despite all their wishes to avoid it. The coup is too far along to be stopped, and too many Uchiha’s are in the know. But the village can’t afford to execute over half of one of it’s most powerful clan publically, and it turns out that the masked man Itachi has reported on is heading a S-clan organisation of mercenaries who seem to be targeting jinchurikis.

And so Itachi, being at least as much of self-sacrificing moron as Shisui, had volunteered to be held responsible for the slaughter of his own family, become a missing-nin and join the mysterious Akatsuki as long as his little brother was spared.

(It’s situations like this one that make Kagami seriously consider the possibility that he is cursed to be surrounded by self-sacrificing morons hell-bent on making him lose what little remains of his grip on reality.)

Kagami has half in mind to lock the kid in his apartment and wrap him up in cotton wool before telling Shisui to sit on him to make sure he doesn’t move. Sadly, he knows enough about his grandson to know that the boy would just do it himself.

Kagami is surrounded by morons with the survival instincts of suicidal lemmings and would like to ask whatever higher power exists for the reason why.

He tries to convince Itachi to wait, to find another way, but inside himself he knows already that there is none. This is the only way that will allow them to protect some of the Uchiha, and it’s with barely hidden fury that he resigns himself to this.

* * *

 

And then, of course, because the world just can’t give him a fucking break, the day before ANBU were supposed to take care of the coup instigators, the masked man (who is calling himself Madara, what the fuck) takes the initiative, forcing Itachi’s hand, and before Kagami can do anything the clan is dead but for three children: one is a traumatized little boy in a coma in the hospital, two is an unconscious young man still laid up in Kagami’s flat and believed dead by the rest of the world, and three is a teen with too much on his shoulders, who just killed his own parents before putting his little brother through Tsukiyomi to make sure that the kid would come after him and kill him.

(Four is the bastard with the mask who slaughtered the clan. Five is an old man feeling the weight of his years and the loss of his loved one, and who still forces himself out of bed in the morning because of a promise to a long-dead man.)

Seriously, what the fuck?

He goes out, goes to the compound that’s bathed in blood and bodies, and he uses a jutsu that he had once created to keep his own eyes from being taken, and slips an undetectable poison in every single Uchiha body. He’s not naive enough to believe that Danzo hasn’t already gotten his grubby paws onto some of them (including Shisui’s, and Kagami is going to  _ end _ him for that someday), but at least that should make it harder for him to get the rest.

(The poison is subtle, undetectable until activated, at which point it would kill the user should he not be an Uchiha. Danzo puts one toe out of line and Kagami will use the jutsu that activates it and kill his former genin teammate in a very painful way. And Hiruzen won’t be able to blame him for that, because it wouldn’t have worked if Danzo hadn’t stolen the sharingans in the first place.)

He makes sure the deads’ legacies are protected, because that’s the least he can do after failing to protect their lives, and then he steels himself and heads to the Hokage’s office.

* * *

 

Kagami storms into the Hokage tower and yells at his Kage for the first time in his life and tells him in no uncertain circumstances that Danzo is a dead man walking, and that the masked man’s life belongs to  _ Kagami _ . 

(He’s pretty sure that’s the man who attacked Kushina as she was giving birth, the man who turned the Kyuubi on the village, killing his son and forcing Minato and Kushina to sacrifice themselves.)

(The masked man is living on borrowed time, and Kagami is going to make damn sure that time is  _ short. _ )

Kagami goes home, locks himself in with his still unconscious grandson and collapses against the wall. Sitting on the floor, he takes his face in his hands and weeps.

He weeps for the Clan, for the men and women, for those who were neither or both, for the children and the elderlies, for the shinobi and the civilians. He weeps for his grandson who lost his last living parent and his best friend in one swoop. He weeps for Sasuke, who will go on thinking the brother he hero-worshipped snapped and killed his entire family. He weeps for Itachi, the boy who longs for peace and drowns in blood.

And he weeps for himself, because he is so fucking tired of this, of losing the people he cares about again and again and again.

And then he wipes away his tears, locks his grief away in that little box at the back of his heart, the one that’s close to bursting with all the sorrows he shows in it, and he puts his mask back on and leaves the apartment.

He takes a month off after this, tells Saru in no uncertain terms that he will not be back until Shisui is better, and until Kagami is sure he can be in the Hokage’s presence without wanting to break his nose, and then he heads home to focus on his last remaining family.

Shisui wakes up three weeks after Danzo attacked him, two weeks after the clan was slaughtered. He wakes up suddenly, without prior warnings, and it’s only the feel of Kagami’s chakra close by that prevents him from attacking outright. His hand flies to his face, to the one eye he has left even though he distinctly remembers ripping it out and handing it to Itachi, and then he whirls to face Kagami.

“What happened?”

And Kagami tells him. Tells him of Itachi saving his life, of Kagami healing him and giving him back his eye. Of Itachi’s stupid plan, and of the masked man who killed everyone but Sasuke. Of Shisui’s mother, dead and cold in the morgue, of Itachi, officially a missing-nin and officiously undercover in an organisation created by the very man who slaughtered the Uchiha Clan.

“What do we do now?” Shisui asks, face emotionless but emotions bursting behind the masks.

“You heal.” Kagami tells him. “You heal, and you hide, and you become a ghost. Like me. And then we do our best to prevent this from ever happening again, and to make sure that Itachi has somewhere to return to once this mess is over.” He pauses. “And when we get our hands on the ones responsible, on Danzo and the man calling himself Madara, we make them regret ever hurting our people.”


	3. The chunin invasion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Orochimaru is an overdramatic little shit, Kagami decides three minutes into the invasion. The jinchuuriki of the Ichibi is throwing a mid-transformation tantrum after being hit by Sasuke’s Chidori, and is being herded outside by his siblings, Sasuke in close pursuit, followed by a bunch of genin. Including Konoha’s own jinchuuriki.
> 
> Seriously, do none of the kids these days have any survival instincts? Did the Academy train that out of them? It would explain so much.
> 
> (In which Kagami finally gets to tell other people 'I told you so', and wonders once again why he is surrounded by morons, and just what he did in his previous life to get landed with this one.)

It takes another three weeks before Shisui is deemed fully recovered, and once he is Kagami starts training him again, this time to get him used to fighting with only one eye, and against multiple opponents (shadow clones are very useful, even if he can only manage six or seven before it leaves him useless).

He does return to Saru’s side, takes up his position as the Hokage’s secret bodyguard again, and sets his grandson to keeping an eye on Sasuke and Naruto. Both children are on Danzo’s radar, and Kagami will be damned if anything happens to them.

Life goes on. Years fly by, the two brats Shisui’s keeping an eye on graduate (Naruto under unforeseen circumstances, true, and his grandson shows great restraint in not flambeing the traitor before the ANBU get there, but the boy graduates nonetheless) and they get placed on Hatake’s team.

Hatake is a wreck and a pretty poor teacher all-around, and while Kagami understand the grief he tries to hide behind his facade and his desire not to grow attached to these three kids only to lose them like he loses everybody, it doesn’t mean that the Uchiha doesn’t drop a few choice words in Saru’s ear to get the man’s ass into gear. The kids deserve better than a half-hearted teacher, and coddling them too much will only get them killed in the field.

Their first C-rank turning A-rank proves his point, and probably hammers it into Hatake who had to be saved by said kids. He ups their training after that, much to the watching Uchiha’s satisfaction.

(Sasuke turns out to take a lot more after his father than either his mom or his brother, much to Shisui’s dismay, and has set himself on the path of the avenger, rejecting any and all overtures of friendship if they are not aimed at making him stronger.)

(It’s all either of them can do not to take the brat over their knee, sometimes, because he’s so arrogant and so fucking lonely and yet does not want to accept any help.)

And then it’s time for the chunin exam again and Hatake nominates his team. Actually, all three of the rookie teams are nominated by their sensei, leading Kagami to seriously question their common sense, but then again this exam is held in Konoha and is probably the safest way to bring a few egos down in a relatively controlled environment.

Of course, that’s before learning that Orochimaru has infiltrated the exams and is targeting the last (official) loyal Uchiha.

* * *

 

“I told you so” he tells Sarutobi bluntly, because he _did_ tell him years ago that his decision to let his student live would come and bite them all in the ass.

The Hokage sighs, but doesn’t deny it, guilt filling his entire being. But he does summon Jiraya back, and forces his other student to spend some time with Naruto after taking off his seal.

The cursed seal Orochimaru put on Sasuke is another matter entirely, and from what Kagami has gathered from observing both Anko’s and Sasuke’s, none of them would be able to take the thing off until the snake is dead and gone. He does slip Saru a few seals to contain it better, and keeps watch on the boy when Shisui can’t.

It’s Shisui who finds a barely alive Gekko Hayate one night, shortly before the last round of the exams, and who manages to heal him enough for the ANBU to find him in time. And that’s how they learn that Orochimaru is not only there to get his hands on the Sharingan, he’s also there to invade the village with Suna’s aid, and take his former sensei’s head while he’s at it.

Not on their watch. Yakushi Kabuto is identified as a traitor and kept carefully in the dark as the Hokage organises the village’s defense. The medics stock up, the ANBU make a few discreet visits to the smiths and some of the higher ranked jounins make sure that their teams are up to scratch. Everyone not on a vital mission is recalled to the village, ostensibly because of Orochimaru’s presence in the second round, and the Academy’s security is raised.

Kagami tells Saru that he will be with him in the Kage’s box and does not take no for an answer. Shisui will be watching the kids, because log knows that Sasuke’s sharingan and the jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi would be valuable targets, but Kagami will be watching the Hokage’s back. If Saru’s not happy with it, the Uchiha has no problem knocking him out and taking his place. There are a few seals he can use to take his appearance with no one the wiser, after all.

Sarutobi relents, reluctantly, and Kagami smiles grimly. He’s already had two Hokage die on him without being able to help, he’s not letting that happen again this time.

He’s old, for a ninja at least. 68 is not an age he ever expected to reach, not when he grew up in the warring era. He has held on for so long because he promised Tobirama, a long time ago, that he would not go looking for death before his time. But he’s old, and he’s tired, and he thinks that maybe his time has finally come. If he dies fighting Orochimaru, protecting Saru, and Shisui, and the village, he will die happy (as long as he has enough strength left in him to activate the poison in Danzo before taking his last breath. If not, well, that why he taught Shisui the jutsu too.).

* * *

 

Orochimaru is an overdramatic little shit, Kagami decides three minutes into the invasion. The jinchuuriki of the Ichibi is throwing a mid-transformation tantrum after being hit by Sasuke’s Chidori, and is being herded outside by his siblings, Sasuke in close pursuit, followed by a bunch of genin. Including Konoha’s own jinchuuriki.

Seriously, do none of the kids these days have any survival instincts? Did the Academy train that out of them? It would explain so much.

There had been a genjutsu, activated by Yakushi and quickly dispelled by the genjutsu division, and now fighting has begun in earnest in the stadium while the Kage box has been encased in a barrier jutsu maintained by four Sound Shinobis. The Kazekage, of course, turns out to be Orochimaru in disguise.

Only the fact that he is still hidden by his unique combination of fuinjutsu and genjutsu prevents Kagami from telling Saru that _he told him so_. Instead, he lets the teacher-student duo wale on each other for a bit, standing ready to intervene if the Hokage is ever truly in danger.

(Sarutobi Hiruzen, as it turns out, is _an idiot_ , because he clearly hasn’t been keeping up with his training like Kagami, Koharu and Torifu did, and if they survive this latest clusterfuck the Uchiha promises himself that the three of them are going to put the Kage through a grueling training regiment because what the hell Saru, you’re supposed to be the God of Shinobi and you let yourself go like this?)

Then Orochimaru decides to do something that puts him on top of Kagami’s hitlist, something so incredibly stupid that the Uchiha can only gape, then settle back and wait for the outcome, bottling up the raging fury that threatens to eat him up.

* * *

 

Coffins rise up from the ground, three of them, and Saru is quick to seal away the one he deems the most dangerous threat, marked with the kanji for ‘Yondaime’, but Shisui’s eyes are fixed on the second one, and something very much like a laugh is trying to break free from his throat.

Tobirama’s jutsu. Orochimaru is using _Tobirama’s jutsu_ to bring back the past Hokages. Including Tobirama. _Really?_

Edo Tensei. The name alone is enough to make Kagami want to puke. That jutsu had been the reason behind the biggest fight he and Tobirama ever had. Kagami had been disgusted at the simple _idea_ of bringing dead people back to fight for them, of ripping them out of the pure land just to cause more death. He had refused to even touch Tobirama’s notes, had begged his lover to destroy them and forget all about that jutsu, and for a time Kagami had believed he did.

Until he found that particular jutsu in the forbidden scroll after asking Saru for permission to consult it to check something about a jutsu that had been created by one of his clansman a few decades ago.

To say he had been furious is an understatement.

And of course, Orochimaru, having once been Saru’s prized student, had had access to the scroll and the jutsu’s it contained.

Of. fucking. course.

(Kagami is definitely going to kill someone. He just hasn’t decided on a target yet. Orochimaru for using it, Saru for letting him access the jutsu, or Tobirama for creating it in the first place, since the idiot is currently in the process of being resurrected.)

He’s going to see Tobirama again in a few seconds and he really, really doesn’t know how to feel about that.

So he falls back on the true and tried method of mocking his opponents, and fades into sight next to a panting Sarutobi.

“Really?” He says, raising an eyebrow. “Tired already, Saru?”

“Shut up, Kagami” the Hokage mumbles.

“I’m setting Koharu on you once this is over.” Kagami tells him, royally ignoring the snake sennin and focusing on the coffins instead. “And for the record, _I told you so_.”

“You’re supposed to be dead!” Orochimaru hisses angrily.

“You’ll find” Kagami replies amiably “that rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Mostly to keep people like you from bothering me, to be honest. Also, using the Nidaime’s jutsu to resurrect the Nidaime? Are you trying to tempt fate?”

The coffins are opening, and two shapes jump out of them to stand in front of Orochimaru.

One of them is the Shodaime, Senju Hashirama, though his face is grey and pale, and looks to be made of broken shards. The second is Tobirama, and it hurts like a raiton jutsu, but Kagami shoves it back.

“Senseis” Sarutobi greets, nearly managing to be calm.

Hashirama gapes and points at him.

“Hiruzen? Is that you? You got old!”

“That tends to happen to other people when you have been dead for _decades,_ brother” Tobirama tells him coldly, causing the famed first Hokage to curl up in depression. The Nidaime’s eyes then lock onto Kagami, and the faintest smile graces his lips as he inclines his head.

“Kagami. Saru. It would seem that someone used Edo Tensei to bring us back.”

“That would be Saru’s traitor of a student” Kagami helpfully explains, thumbing at his Kage, then pointing at Orochimaru. “Tsunade-chan’s teammate, and the sensei of her late brother Nawaki, Hashirama-sama. He betrayed Konoha and experimented on children, most notably to try and give them the Mokuton.” He paused, looked at Orochimaru again, and threw the coup de grâce. “He made Tsunade-chan _cry_.”

As one, the Senju brothers turn to glare at Orochimaru, who can’t help but take a step back. Tsunade had been Hashirama’s little darling, and he had spoiled her rotten (and taught her how to gamble, much to her mother’s dismay and his wife’s ire). Tobirama had also been close to his grandniece, and had become her surrogate grandfather after his brother’s death. Threatening the girl had usually been a one-way ticket to hell for whoever made that mistake.

“I summoned you!” The Sennin retorts, taking out two kunais with seals wrapped around the handles, clearly intent on burying them into the resurrected constructs to take control of them. “You will obey me!”

_Like hell._

With a Shunshin taught to him by his grandson, Kagami moves too fast for the others to react. One hand grabs the sealed kunais while the other, bleeding from where he pricked his thumb with the side of his sword, is already going through hand seals.

Another step, a quick press of his bloody hand against the back of the resurrected Hokages necks, and then he’s back at Saru’s side and joining his fingers for the last seal of the jutsu.

“Fuin: Freedom of will and action” He speaks softly, flaring his chakra.

Instantly, the Kage straighten, their skin taking on a more human appearance as their chakra levels skyrocket.

* * *

 

“How many times” Kagami snaps. “ Have I told you that this jutsu would come back to haunt you, literally, Tobirama?”

The second Hokage grimaces slightly, even as he moves to their side of the field with his brother.

“I didn’t expect anyone to manage to work it out from what few notes I left behind” He admits reluctantly, glaring at his brother until the man uses his mokuton to keep Orochimaru in place just in case. “... You found a way to counter it?”

“Two actually.” The Uchiha replies coldly. “One to send the dead back to the afterlife, one to give you back your free will.”

Kagami crosses his arms (because he cannot resist the urge to run up to the man and hug him, because part of him is scared that he won’t be able to touch him, and he doesn’t dare to let his hopes up, because part of him wants to deck the bastard) and leans against one of the trees. “I figured some upstart would get smart enough to get it to work and arrogant enough to summon the most famous fighters of history with it, so I might as well be prepared.”

Both of them are ignoring their surroundings, the weird looks both Hashirama and Saru are giving them, the rising anger in Orochimaru’s chakra.

“How long has it been?” Tobirama asks.

“Forty-eight years” Hiruzen starts to answer.

“Twenty-two years” Kagami tells the white-haired man, surprising their audience.

Tobirama winces visibly.

“Kagami…” He starts, but the Uchiha cuts him off.

“Twenty-two fucking years, Tobi. Mito-sensei died, there is a rogue Uchiha pretending to be Madara who caused the death of the Yondaime and of Sensei’s successor after unleashing the Kyuubi against the village, Shuichi died protecting civilians, Danzo turned the village against my clan, the Uchiha were influenced by the Madara wannabe to plan a coup d’etat and were then slaughtered by him and one of the last loyal Uchiha, a thirteen years old child, who was ordered by Danzo to take care of the conspirators. And this after Danzo ripped Shisui’s eye out of his socket when my grandson wanted to use his ultimate genjutsu to prevent the coup, then proceeded to try to kill him. Shisui and I are officially dead, the last Uchiha in the village is a twelve-year old kid who wants to kill his older brother for the death of the clan and whom the snake is after for his sharingan, and said brother is undercover in the organisation created by the Madara wannabe to hunt down jinchuurikis.” His voice is cold, robotic, too low to be heard by the snake sennin, but loud enough that the first through third Hokage can hear him perfectly. “Now, if you don’t mind, it’s time for Saru to do what he should have done years ago when his favourite student turned out to have the morals of a pebble. The village is being invaded by allied forces from Suna and Oto - Orochimaru’s village - and there’s at least one crazy jinchuuriki about to go full bijuu on a bunch of genins. All of them could use your help. Saru, I swear to the log that if you don’t deal with the snake this time, I’ll take him out myself and make you watch.”

With these words, and ignoring the looks thrown his way and the worried glances of his soulmate, Kagami strides towards the one corner of the barrier and catches the girl maintaining it in a genjutsu, causing the whole thing to collapse.

He signals the waiting ANBUs that the undeads are on their side and then he is gone, following the trail of the Ichibi’s chakra. Shisui is keeping an eye on the kids, but a few genins against an unstable jinchuuriki about to unleash his bijuu on them definitely need all the help they can get.

(And if he’s running away from his resurrected soul mate, well, at least he’s got a valid excuse. He cannot deal with this, not now, not in this situation, not when part of him wants to hurt Tobirama so much it scares him.)

(Where is Torifu when Kagami needs a voice of reason?)

As if summoned by his thoughts, the Akimichi is suddenly running by his side.

“Any reason I can suddenly feel Tobirama-sensei ’s chakra originating from the Kage’s box? Along with Hashirama-sama’s? ” The Head of ANBU asks calmly, as though they aren’t in the middle of being invaded, throwing an enlarged punch at an Oto nin to their left. “And for you to be running around unmasked?”

“Orochimaru” Kagami answers tensely “is a fucking _moron_ , and the Edo Tensei should never have been created in the first place.”

“Aah.”

(There are many reasons for Kagami to consider Torifu his best friend. His uncanny ability to know exactly what the Uchiha means and when to remain silent is one of them.)

“Hatake sent Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura, Uzumaki Naruto, Nara Shikamaru and Aburame Shino after the Kazekage’s children” the ANBU summarizes. “I take it Shisui-kun is with them?”

 _Hatake is a moron too_ , Kagami thinks grimly as he nods. These are children, none of them genin for more than six months. Sometimes, he really thinks Hatake’s head is even more messed up than they thought, because it seems that the man has forgotten that just because he was already a jounin at thirteen, that’s not the case of his students.

“Shisui’s keeping an eye on Sasuke and Naruto just in case someone tries to use the invasion to sneak them away. If the Kyuubi reacts to the Ichibi, he might be able to push the fox back, but I would rather not take the chance.”

He’s already lost his son to one bijuu, he’s not keen on losing his grandson to another.

His friend nods as they push faster.

* * *

They reach the children as the battle concludes. They would have gotten there faster, but some Oto nins apparently thought that old meant weak instead of experienced, and slowed them down a bit. The Uchiha and the Haruno are unconscious next to a tree, and the two jinchuuriki look ready to join them. The appearance of a giant tanuki fighting an equally giant fox had momentarily made them fear the worse, until the fox disappeared to reveal itself to be a henged toad boss. It appears that the Uzumaki has managed to win, and is currently…

“Is he giving the insane jinchuuriki a _friendship speech?”_ Kagami asks his former genin teammate disbelievingly.

“The boy takes waaaay too much after the first Hokage, and they’re not even blood related” Torifu despairs.

They remain hidden as the jinchuuriki’s siblings collect him and leave, and the Konoha jinchuuriki loses the battle against unconsciousness. Only then do they leave the shadows, Shisui materialising next to the downed children. His face is set in it’s most impassible mask, and Kagami winces. The bodies of three non-descript ninjas he drops to the ground do not help.

“Root” the younger Uchiha spits the word like a curse. “Tried to make a grab for my cousin.”

(For Itachi’s little brother, he doesn’t say, for one of the last tethers of sanity left to the Uchiha heir.)

Kagami closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and reopens them.

This is the last straw. He has been patient long enough. Part of him would like nothing more than to confront his old teammate, preferably with both Torifu and Tobirama at his side, and to ask Danzo _why_ , why this hatred for the Uchiha, why this warmongering, but most of him is just _done._ Danzo already orchestrated the fall and subsequent death of the Uchiha Clan. Kagami will not allow him the chance to harm his family further. He twists his fingers into handsigns, but changes the last one at the last second.

(Once, three boys were thrown together under the care of the Shodaime Hokage’s wife and were told to become a team and survive the war. They did, and they flourished under her training. They rushed through the ranks, and became part of the Nidaime’s own team.)

(Their Kage died, and one of them nearly lost himself to grief, another threw himself into ANBU and the last one sunk deeper and deeper into the shadows until they couldn’t drag him out.)

Kagami wants to kill the man Danzo became with his own hands, but for the sake of the little boy who had once taken a kunai for him, he uses the non-lethal version of the jutsu. Danzo will be unconscious until Kagami wakes him up, and then they’ll have a talk that has been a long time coming, Kagami will finally get the answers he’s been looking for for decades, and then Danzo will die.

(Because there is no version of this story where Kagami doesn’t kill him for what he did to the Uchiha Clan, for what he did to Shisui, for what he did in the name of the village Tobirama cared for so much. Danzo will die, and Kagami will grieve for the little boy who was on his genin team even as he will bask in the satisfaction of having eliminated the biggest threat to what is left of his family.)

But meanwhile, Danzo being unavailable should hinder Root’s activities at least for the time being.

“I’ll deal with him later” he sighs, crouching to gather the unconscious Naruto in his arms. “Let’s bring the children to the hospital first.”

“ _We_ will deal with him later” Torifu corrects him sternly. “ _After_ we’ve had a chance to talk with Tobirama-sensei. _Some of us_ haven’t seen him in nearly fifty years and would like a chance to catch up before whatever jutsu Orochimaru used fades away.”

Kagami snorts. “Oh you have all the times in the world. I subverted his jutsu and it’s now being powered by the residual chakra in the surrounding area. Given that we’ve just been invaded, chakra is _everywhere_. And even if we hadn’t, the trees planted by the first hokage have been stocking chakra for over half a century now. They’re here to stay until they chose to move on.”

Shisui raises an eyebrow. “The Second Hokage?”

“Orochimaru completed Tobirama-sensei’s Edo Tensei” Torifu explains. “He used it to bring back the first two hokages, from what I’ve gathered. And your grandfather managed to free them from the snake and turn them to our side, because he’s an overachiever and a paranoid bastard when it comes to fuinjutsu.”

“I told Tobirama a thousand times that the Edo Tensei was a shitty idea that would come back to bite him” Kagami mutters. “But did he listen to me? Nooo, let’s summon the dead to fight beside us, and use a sealed kunai planted in their heads to control them. That sounds like a fantastic idea, doesn’t it? Should just have burned all his notes after he died, but he had given some of them to Saru and I forgot about it. Of course the snake brat found them…”

Shisui shares a look with Torifu. “I take it this a common rant?”

“Not that I knew of before today, but then again your grandfather has always been particularly close to Tobirama-sensei, so it doesn’t surprise me one bit. I should honestly be more surprised that Kagami hasn’t resorted to using Edo Tensei himself just to bring him back to rant at him, but then again he does have more morals and common sense than the idiots usually attempting to recreate that particular jutsu have.”

“I can still hear you, Torifu” Kagami snarls. “And my day has been pretty shitty, and I’m still itching for a fight, so let’s get these kids to the hospital so that we can take care of the rest of the sound nins.”

“And so you can get back to avoiding the summon boss in the room” Torifu mutters, but he grabs the pink-haired genin nonetheless, and Shisui does the same with Sasuke. “You’re not going to be able to avoid him completely, you do know that. I’m honestly surprised he hasn’t shown up yet.”

“The barrier around the Kage box was maintained by four of the snake’s experiments, all of them bearing the cursed seal. Trust me, he’s busy enough as it is, and that’s if Saru finally grew a pair and killed Orochimaru already. If he didn’t, then he and Hashirama-sama will be too busy making the snake regret ever hurting Tsunade-chan to worry about little old me.”

* * *

 

So of course, because Kagami's luck _is that bad,_ by the time they reach the hospital with the children in tow, the three Hokages are waiting for them.


	4. Edo Tensei, or: The Uchiha aren't the only one who don't know how to deal with strong emotions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Now, not that I’m complaining, but how in log’s name are you back amongst the living, sensei?” Koharu asks, looking at Tobirama.
> 
> “Orochimaru”
> 
> “He created a stupid jutsu to bring back the dead and didn’t destroy his notes”
> 
> Hiruzen and Kagami speak at exact same time, causing Koharu to raise her eyebrow again. Kagami winces. That gesture is usually followed by painful things, often aimed in his direction.
> 
> “Try again” She says dryly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which we learn more about the story behind the Edo Tensei, Tobirama is a fool, but a fool in love, and Kagami finally gets to rant about quite a number of things, with more to come in further chapters.

So of course, by the time they get the kids to the hospital, they find the invasion nearly over and the three kages waiting for them. Orochimaru is dead, for good this time if Saru’s expression is anything to go by, and Jiraya looks like he doesn’t know whether to rage or cry as he stands behind his sensei. Kagami feels for them, he really does, but he has too much on his mind right now to do anything about it. A couple of medic-nins grab the genins after a couple of threats if anything untowards happens to them, and then Saru is gesturing towards his office with a look that tells Kagami that there’s no getting out of this.

His only satisfaction as he falls into step with the rest of the group as they walk through the slowly returning to peaceful village is that Torifu has signaled for Koharu and Homura to join them and Kagami knows they’ll help him give the Sandaime hell later on for letting his own training slip so far.

(He’s still not looking at Tobirama, and if his nails are biting into his palms from clenching his fists too much, he does his best not to let anyone notice.)

(Which, of course, means that Shisui is looking at him with discreet worry and looks seconds away from plastering himself to his side. Torifu just sighs longsufferingly and Koharu looks like the cat who just ate the canary and the cream. Homura just looks confused.)

* * *

 

They reach the office, and Kagami activates the secrecy seals as soon as the door closes behind them.

“What’s the status of the village?” Torifu asks Koharu before anyone else can start talking.

(Kagami fucking loves his best friend.)

The lone woman raises a perfectly shaped eyebrow in a way that tells both Kagami and Torifu that she is not fooled by their little game, but she nods and answers anyway.

“Thanks to Shisui-kun, we were aware of the invasion a month before it started and so were able to prepare. Most of the civilians had been discreetly evacuated during the first matches, without anyone being the wiser. Most of the genin were then assigned to protecting the remaining ones and guarding the Academy, along with seasoned chunins and a few jounins. As a result, we lost far less people than we could have. I don’t have the definite numbers yet, but around three dozen shinobis, mostly chunins, and maybe a dozen civilians all-told. Of course all of this could have been easily avoided decades ago.” She adds with a pointed glare at their current Hokage. “The greatest danger came from the summons, but thanks to Jiraya’s toads and the timely intervention of Hashirama-sama and Tobirama-sensei, the worst has been avoided.”

She allows a rare smile to show as she inclines her head at the two resurrected Kages. 

“Despite the circumstances, it is a pleasure to see you again, Tobirama-sensei. You have been greatly missed.”

“It is good to see you again too, Koharu” Tobirama greets her quietly, and Kagami has to take a deep breath because fuck. It’s been over twenty years since he last heard his soulmate, and nearly fifty since he heard the sound of his voice without it being distorted by the veil between the living and the dead. He locks his gaze on the picture of the fourth Hokage behind Saru’s desk, determined not to look in Tobirama’s direction.

Better the heartache of the loss of Minato and Kushina than the agony of wondering how many time he’ll have to grieve for Tobirama.

“Anyway, that’s it for the general forces” Koharu goes on. “I have not have the time to debrief with the ANBU forces yet, as they are still busy with the last fighters and the prisoners, but I don’t think the toll was very high, thanks to the advance warning.” She nods at Shisui, then turns to face the elder Uchiha. “It has, however, been brought to my attention that some of our shinobi are currently behaving very strangely, and Shimura Danzo has been brought to his private medical facility in a deep coma that seems to be stymying the medics. Is there anything you would like to say about that, Kagami-kun?”

The sweetness of her tone makes Kagami wince, but doesn’t stop the grimness from washing over his face as he answers.

“Well, I wouldn’t like to speculate, but it could be that some elements of the village forces felt the need to make sure that their dead clansmens’ bodies wouldn’t be desecrated without punishment and implemented a failsafe that would poison anyone trying to steal their bloodline. It could also be that that particular poison jutsu could be remotely activated by a member of that clan, to various degrees of lethality. And maybe, just maybe, said clan member decided that the last straw had broken the summon’s back when said bloodline stealer, not happy with having had a hand in the near extermination of the clan in question, tried to have its youngest member kidnapped using the invasion as a cover.”

He turns toward Saru, Torifu a strong presence at his back, Shisui at his side.

“Enough is enough, Saru. I don’t give a damn about proving his guilt to the council anymore. Because of Danzo, my whole clan has been reduced to four people, one of them a madman styling himself as Madara. Because of Danzo, I nearly lost my grandson. Because of Danzo, Itachi-kun is alone in an organisation of S-Class missing nin led by the madman who slaughtered everyone not involved in the attempted coup. Because of Danzo, your precious student went off the rail of what little ethic he had to experiment on our own people."

“Danzo stepped out of line a long time ago” Torifu agrees grimly. “We waited too long already. At first because he was still useful, later because you insisted we needed to expose him and needed proof to do that. Kagami and myself, as the remaining members of team Mito, took it upon ourselves to make sure he would not harm anyone else. He is not dead. Not yet. But he won’t wake unless Kagami releases the first level of the jutsu. And if he does, it will only be to finally hear his reasoning before putting him down like the mad dog he is.”

None of them are looking at Tobirama. For all that he was once their team leader, they are first and foremost Mito’s genin team. And if there’s one thing their teacher taught them, it’s to take care of their teammates. Even if that means killing one of them if he’s too far gone to save.

The Hokage looks physically wounded at the thought, even though he knows that this is more than what his old friend deserves.

“We won’t ask you to hold the executioner’s blade this time, Saru.” Kagami tells him gently, but firmly. “His life belongs to me, as I told you years ago.”

Sarutobi Hiruzen nods, and sits down behind his desk, looking ten years older.

“I know, Kagami. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

It’s not worth much right now, because Kagami has lost so much because of Danzo and yet part of him still wants to weep for the little boy who was once his friend. But he nods anyway, because what else can he do? Saru just put down a man he once cherished as one of his student, and Kagami is holding the blade over the head of a man who was once the Hokage’s best friend, despite all their differences.

“Now, not that I’m complaining, but how in log’s name are you back amongst the living, sensei?” Koharu asks, looking at Tobirama.

“Orochimaru”

“He created a stupid jutsu to bring back the dead and didn’t destroy his notes”

Hiruzen and Kagami speak at exact same time, causing Koharu to raise her eyebrow again. Kagami winces. That gesture is usually followed by painful things, often aimed in his direction.

“Try again” She says dryly.

“What?” the Uchiha defends himself. “It’s true! If  _ someone _ hadn’t been playing around creating a resurrection jutsu which allowed someone to raise the dead and control them, they wouldn’t be there. And don’t look at me like that, Utatane, I do have some common sense. Orochimaru used the jutsu. Too bad for him that I decided to work on a counter when I realised your mule-headed sensei would not stop working on the damn thing. They’re free from his control, and as long as they can drain chakra from their surroundings they can basically stay here indefinitely, though I don’t recommend it no matter how much Saru would like to push his paperwork on someone else.” 

He’s studiously not looking at Tobirama as he says that.

“I didn’t think I would ever have to admit that you have more sense than Tobirama-sensei, Uchiha” Koharu sighs. “But in this case…”

Meanwhile, Hashirama is looking at his brother aghast, and Kagami remembers suddenly that his lover had once mentioned that the man was terrified of ghosts. 

(Mito, who had also known of this, had always taken great pleasure in using that fear against her husband, often roping her team into helping her. More than once, Kagami’s genjutsu ‘practice’ had resulted in a shaking Shodaime hiding under his desk.)

(Good times.)

“Raising the dead?”The first Hokage shrieks. “TOBIRAMA! What were you thinking?”

“Thank you!”Kagami bursts out. “Finally someone else notices how stupid that idea was!”

Senju Tobirama glares at all of them. 

“I was thinking” he grits out. “that it was war and that my people were dying left and right when I had promised myself I wouldn’t let that happen again. I was thinking that if I died protecting the village, I would rather someone summons me to act as its shield even after death to continue to protect them rather than watch from the pure world as they fell like flies!”

Kagami… Kagami is looking at his soulmate as if seeing him for the first time, really looking at him for the first time since he was brought back, as the horrifying realisation hits him.

If Tobirama is telling the truth (and he is, Kagami knows that, even if he’s not telling the whole truth, because he knows the man’s tells, knows when he’s lying and when he’s not), he had created the jutsu knowing he would be used as a puppet to shield his village.

Except that if that had been the case, he would have told more people about the Edo Tensei, made sure that they would know how to summon him.

But he hadn’t.

The only person Tobirama had told had been Kagami. Kagami who had ranted and raved about the moral implications of the jutsu, never mind the religious ones. Kagami who had begged him to destroy it, repeatedly, who had sworn to find a way to counter it, to destroy it. Kagami who had vehemently refused to even touch Tobirama’s seals drafts, and swore to never use it.

And so Tobirama had stopped mentioning it. He had hidden his research, some in his house, some in the office, some at the morgue. But he hadn’t destroyed it. He had left it where some experimenting genius could find it and reverse-engineer it. Had left it in the bloody forbidden scroll, even.

There was no way someone as smart and as independent as Tobirama Senju would not have created safeguards to protect himself in case he was brought back to life by this jutsu. No way. Odds are, if Kagami hadn’t been there to prevent Orochimaru to insert the controlling kunais, the Nidaime would have managed to free himself anyway.

Kagami is going to kill the man again, with his own two hands this time.

The walls of the office are closing in on him, and he finds that he can’t breathe. No one has noticed yet, too caught up in the heated argument between the two brothers, with Koharu, Saru and Homura pitching in from time to time.

He can’t breathe, and his vision is starting to go dark as he gropes blindly for the back of a chair to steady himself.

Tobirama created that damn jutsu just so he could be resurrected to be there for him. (Because he had seen how Kagami had reacted to his father’s death, had had to physically stop him from killing himself after his little brother, only eleven at the time, had been killed right in front of him. Because Tobirama had known that Kagami didn’t take the death of his precious people well.) 

Tobirama had only shown him directly, in hope that Kagami would use it to bring him back if he ever needed the extra help, if he ever needed  _ Tobirama _ . Except that Kagami would never do that, because he loved Tobirama too much to reduce him to a puppet, would never be able to send him to fight in his stead when he already felt so guilty about his death, would not have been able to bear the grief of losing him again. So the  _ manipulative old bastard _ had gone and left his notes where some less morally sound ninja would find it and had placed safeguards on himself to make sure he wouldn’t be used against Konoha and would be able to look for Kagami.

There’s a hand on his shoulder, a worried voice calling his name, too young to be anyone but Shisui, but it barely registers as Kagami realises just how far Tobirama had been willing to go, even back then, when they had just started seeing each other and didn’t know yet that they were soulmates.

Tobirama had always been spectacularly bad at expressing his emotions and feelings, but this took the prize.

Shisui’s voice finally breaks the fight as the others take notice of Kagami’s predicament. Torifu is at his side in an instant, hands flaring with medical chakra as he runs a quick diagnostic jutsu and swears.

“He’s going into shock!” He barks. “Kagami! Kagami, listen to me you stubborn asshole, you need to breathe, you hear me?”

More than his friend’s well-meant insults, it’s the sudden flare of Tobirama’s chakra just in front of him that snaps Kagami out of his unresponsive state. It’s familiar, not exactly warm, not when Tobirama is water and ice and cold, but it wraps around him like a well-loved blanket and he can breathe again. He takes a few deep gulps of air, the dark spots at the edge of his vision receding, and then, before anyone can stop him, he lets go of the chair he had been using to steady himself, takes two steps and slams his fist into the second Hokage’s face, breaking his nose in the process if the sound is anything to go by.

“You …!” He’s seething, can’t even get the words to form properly. Instead, he punches the man in the stomach and watches with satisfaction as he crumbles to the ground.

The others shake themselves of their shock, and Hashirama is suddenly in his face, expression furious and chakra raging as Shisui grabs and restrains his grandfather.

“What the…” Sarutobi starts, only for Tobirama to wheeze out a wry chuckle.

“I think I deserved that.”

And suddenly, Kagami finds his words again.

“You  _ think? _ You  _ think? _ Log damn it Tobi, what the fuck were you thinking? Anything could have happened. Anyone could have found that jutsu. They could have found a way around your failsafes. You could have been summoned  _ decades _ from now.” He shakes Shisui off, ignores the first Hokage and the shell shocked looks the others are giving him, and starts pacing. “And you have the galls to say that  _ Uchiha’s _ are the one who go crazy because of strong emotions? Damn it Tobi, you could have  _ told me _ . I mean, I would have probably kicked your ass, but we could have had that discussion and…”

“And you would have made sure to destroy all my notes” Tobirama cuts him off, pushing himself up, nose still bleeding. “And I wouldn’t have been able to come back.”

“That’s what happens when you die” Kagami retorts, sarcasm dripping from his voice. “You die and then you’re gone and sometimes if you’re lucky you get to come back as ghost to haunt your soulmate but even that is  _ temporary. _ And that’s how it’s meant to be, Tobi. We live and we die and we grieve and that  _ it _ . You can’t just go and pluck people out of the pure lands on a whim! We’re not meant to live forever, to constantly come back from the dead. Life would lose its meaning, if that was the case.”

He rakes a hand through his still dark hair (take that, Saru, at least Kagami is not entirely grey) and looks out the window, to the village were fires are being put out and injured brought to the hospital.

“Damn it Tobirama” Kagami speaks again, quieter this time. “I thought I was supposed to be the reckless one. Then you go and get yourself killed and then this.” 

His voice breaks a little, and suddenly Tobirama is  _ right there _ , in front of him, and his arms are around Kagami, and that’s it. Kagami feels all his anger, all that pent-up rage leave him as the Nidaime’s arms close around him and press him to a strong chest. He tries to shake him off, hits him weakly on the chest, but Tobirama only tightens his hold on him and Kagami is  _ tired. _ With a sigh, he lets his head fall in the crook of the albino’s neck.

“I’m still furious” He mutters.

And he is, he really is. It’s going to take him a long time to forgive Tobirama for this madness. But right now, right here, Kagami is just tired. Tired of being angry, tired of being lonely, tired of missing the man who has him wrapped into his arms.

“And rightly so” Tobirama acquiesces. “In retrospect, it  _ was  _ a pretty bad idea, and I really should have listened to you.”

“... Shut up.”


	5. Reactions, seals and serious discussions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And just like that, Koharu takes charge, rousing Saru from his stupor as she organises the after crisis. Hashirama is still in shock, though this time the old woman’s forcefulness seems to be partially at fault, and Tobirama lets out a wry chuckle from where he’s still embracing Kagami.
> 
> “It appears that I made a mistake when I appointed Saru as my successor” he tells his former students. “It seems that Koharu might have been the better choice.”
> 
> The look said woman gives him is utterly unimpressed. “And deal with all the paperwork? No thank you, I’m happy enough ordering the ANBU’s around. And someone needs to keep an eye on the boys, have you seen the trouble they get themselves into?” 
> 
>  
> 
> In which there are some shocked reactions, Sarutobi's old friends gang up on him about his lack of training, insults to seals are dealt with and Koharu is terrifyingly efficient and efficiently terrifying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter is up! Part fun, part feels, part semi-angst, it was both fun and hard to write ! Let me know what you think of it.

_ “I’m still furious” He mutters. _

_ And he is, he really is. It’s going to take him a long time to forgive Tobirama for this madness. But right now, right here, Kagami is just tired. Tired of being angry, tired of being lonely, tired of missing the man who has him wrapped into his arms. _

_ “And rightly so” Tobirama acquiesces. “In retrospect, it  was  a pretty bad idea, and I really should have listened to you.” _

_ “... Shut up.” _

* * *

 

They remain like this for a few minutes, until someone clears their throat.

“Would the two of you prefer a room?” Koharu asks, perfect eyebrow raised, mirth dancing in her eyes.

Saru’s pipe has fallen on his desk, tobacco splattered everywhere as the Hokage gapes at them. Shisui is studiously looking at the ceiling, obviously feeling ill at ease and out of place. Homura is doing a pretty good impression of a fish, as is Jiraya, while Torifu chuckles quietly. As for Senju Hashirama, the man looks thunderstruck, torn between surprise, utter shock, confusion and anger.

Tobirama sighs as he rests his chin on Kagami’s head. “Subtle, Koharu, really subtle. I could have sworn I taught you better.”

“Pot, kettle.” The lone woman in the room answers dryly. “In case you didn’t notice, sensei, your little lovers’ quarrel was not exactly discreet either. You also appear to have broken your brother. Now if you’re quite done, we  _ are _ still dealing with the aftermath of an invasion here. Oto was headed by Orochimaru, but Suna was our ally. We need to find out when exactly the Kazekage was replaced, who else was involved, and what to do about it. And I want Yaguchi Kabuto’s brain on a platter for Inoichi to go through, he appears to have been Orochimaru’s right hand man. There is also the matter of the fact that half the village has seen the two of you fight on our side and will be asking questions soon, so we need to prepare answers but for now let's keep this quiet. I don’t think anyone recognized Kagami and Shisui, or saw their sharingan, but I don’t want any of you to go out unmasked at the moment: that’s just asking for trouble and it finds you easily enough as it is. Torifu, if you are quite done laughing like a hyena, you need to head back to headquarters and start organising the interrogation of the prisoners. Send a runner to the tower once you have the exact death and prisoner toll. Homura, stop gaping like a fish, I need you to oversee the damage evaluation and report on the civilian side of the invasion. Shisui-kun, you’re with him.”

And just like that, Koharu takes charge, rousing Saru from his stupor as she organises the after crisis. Hashirama is still in shock, though this time the old woman’s forcefulness seems to be partially at fault, and Tobirama lets out a wry chuckle from where he’s still embracing Kagami.

“It appears that I made a mistake when I appointed Saru as my successor” he tells his former students. “It seems that Koharu might have been the better choice.”

The look said woman gives him is utterly unimpressed. “And deal with all the paperwork? No thank you, I’m happy enough ordering the ANBU’s around. And someone needs to keep an eye on the boys, have you seen the trouble they get themselves into?”

“The civilian council would be slaughtered within two hours” Hiruzen points out to his teacher as he fills in the necessary paperwork (bureaucracy stops for nothing, not even an invasion). “Trust me, I have a hard enough time not setting them on fire, and I’m the most patient of this lot.”

Koharu snorts.

“The civilian council wouldn’t last five minutes. And if you had kept up with your training as  _ we told you time and time again _ , Sarutobi Hiruzen, they would be less likely to try and bury you in paperwork in order to try to slip something without you noticing, and more busy trying to do everything not to attract your ire.”

“Seriously Saru, you were winded after three minutes of ‘battle’ with the snake.  _ Three minutes _ . I counted.” Kagami mutters from his place in Tobirama’s arms. “You couldn’t even make more than a single shadow clone. That’s  _ pathetic _ . Kami no Shinobi my ass. You used maybe three different jutsus and nearly got your ass kicked. I’m sicking that taijutsu nut, Maito Gai, on you as soon as this mess is over. And you’re going to get a crash course in fuinjutsu because if you think I didn’t notice you studying Minato’s suicide-sealing jutsu, you have another thing coming.”

Sarutobi winces. He should have remembered that Kagami has already lost two Kages he was supposed to protect, and would not take kindly to a third sacrificing himself.

The mention of fuinjutsu catches his attention, though, and he jumps on the chance to change the subject, and at the very least delay the inevitable of his friends ganging up on him to start training in earnest again.

“Speaking of fuinjutsu, Kagami. Now that Orochimaru is… dead, do you think you and Jiraya could take another look at the cursed seal?”

Kagami’s expression turns  _ vicious _ .

“It would be my  _ pleasure _ . Consider that abomination dealt with. That thing is an insult to seal makers everywhere. Is Mitarashi available? I don’t want to start on Sasuke’s until he’s out of the hospital at least, Kakashi’s seal should hold for a few more hours especially now that the snake is dust.”

“Last I saw her, she and Ibiki were looking way too gleeful at the idea of interrogating some of the higher ranked prisoners” Koharu tells him. “Take Sensei with you, will you? Might as well tell Ibiki what happened, in case we learn from the prisoners that this isn’t the first time Orochimaru used the Edo Tensei.”

Tobirama nods, reluctantly letting go of his soulmate. Taking one look at his still gaping brother, he sighs and manually closes his mouth.

“Stop staring like a moron and find a way to make yourself useful. I have work to do.”

“Oh I have work for him alright” Koharu mutters, opening the door and catching a secretary to hand her a message. “One of the kids Orochimaru experimented on turned out to develop the mokuton. You and him are going to repair the walls that were damaged by the invasions, and make sure the surrounding buildings are still structurally sound before we bring the civilians down from the shelters. It’ll do Tenzo some good to have a proper teacher.”

Seeing as the first Hokage looked ready to have a stroke, Kagami signals for Jiraya and Tobirama to follow him as he left the room, mask back on. The two men follows him, though Tobirama takes the time to henge himself as a random ANBU to escape notice.

* * *

“So, fuinjutsu master?” Tobirama asks as they take the roofs.

“I blame you. And him.” Kagami answers, pointing at Jiraya. “Namikaze Minato, the Yondaime, was Jiraya’s student, and I’ve never seen a bigger fuinjutsu nerd. And I lived with you for a while, so that’s saying something. Anyway, Minato got elected, I became his bodyguard, and once he learned that I had been Mito-sensei’s student AND on your personal team, he started hounding me about fuinjutsu. I started learning mostly in self-defense, but it turned out that I’m not half-bad at it.”

Jiraya snorts.

“‘Not half-bad’. Says the man who took one look at Orochimaru’s cursed seal, cursed the air blue, and then proceeded to come up with a counter in less than two hours. Nevermind that I had been trying and failing to do that for over a decade, and that before he got the sealing bug I was considered Konoha’s foremost seal master. Minato used to wonder if you weren’t a bastard Uzumaki, what with how fast you took up sealing.”

“Nope, sorry, full-blooded Uchiha here. Anyway, that’s how it started and then when I found out you hadn’t destroyed all your notes about the Edo Tensei, I figured I might as well make sure that didn’t come back to bite us in the ass, which it nearly did because you are a moron, and suddenly I was spending most of my down-time practicing sealing. And don’t sell yourself short, Jiraya. I might not have been practicing sealing for as long as you have, but I do have the advantage of the Sharingan, having had Mito-sensei as a sensei, and watching Tobirama work on his own seals. I must have absorbed something by osmosis. As for the Cursed seal, Minato and I worked together to try and find a way to take Anko’s seal off. I still had all my notes, so it wasn’t that much of a stretch. Besides, you were busy with your network, you couldn’t exactly spend weeks at a time on a fuinjutsu project.”

Jiraya laughs.

“Kushina-chan was quite glad that you remembered so much from your time with Mito-sama. The fall of Uzushio left her stranded, without the support of her clan and village, and cost her much of her heritage.”

“A lot of things happened while I was… absent” Tobirama says quietly. “It is still hard to believe that Uzushio could have fallen.”

“Yeah, about that” Jiraya says, looking at both of them shrewdly as they make their way to T&I. “What was that whole forty-eight/twenty-two years thing Sensei was pestering you about, Tobirama-sama? It seems that you are more up to date than expected on things that happened since your death.”

Kagami chances a look at his lover, then snorts. “Soulmates” he answers matter-of-factly, pointing between Tobirama and himself. “Except that instead of the usual couple of months, Tobi stayed with me for approximately twenty-four years.”

To both of their surprise, Jiraya simply nods. “Yeah, I kind of figured it had to be something like that. Do you think your work on the Edo Tensei played a role in your longer than usual stay in the living world following your death?”

* * *

By the time they reach the T&I building, the trio is engrossed in theoretical fuinjutsu discussion, and the guarding chunin at the entrance has to clear their throat three times before they realise that they’ve reached their destination.

“Anything I can help you with, Jiraya-sama?” The chunin asks, eyeing the henged Tobirama suspiciously.

“We need to talk with Ibiki-san and Mitarashi-san” the Sennin explains. “Do not worry about my companions. It is for the best if their identity is not revealed at the moment.”

Because this is T&I, the chunin nods, stands aside to let them enter, and whispers a quiet “Welcome, Hokage-sama” as Tobirama passes by. Odds are, the chunin doesn’t know if he’s Hashirama or Tobirama, but this is the central intelligence office of Konoha, and the odds that they aren’t already aware of the Kage’s return are slim.

Probably alerted by the guard at the entrance, Ibiki and Anko meet them in the hallway. The head of T&I takes one look at them, then inclines his head towards his office.

Tobirama’s henge dissolves as soon as the door closes behind them, much to Ibiki’s satisfaction.

“Good to know that Namikaze's seals are still working” he mutters as he sits down behind his desk and mentions for the others to take a seat.

(Anko perches herself on his desk, as usual, because despite having been the apprentice of the snake sennin, Kagami has a lot of reasons to believe that she is part cat, but that is a story for another day.)

“Tobirama-sama” Ibiki inclines his head. Nothing fazes the man, from what Kagami knows of him. “I see the rumors were true, for once.”

Tobirama nods back. “Ibiki-san. Honored to meet you. My students speak highly of your quality as an interrogator.”

“Thanks for the compliment, but I have an inkling that this is not what you’re here for. With all due respect, we do have a lot of work right now.”

“Orochimaru is dead” Jiraya says bluntly, and Kagami notes the way Anko flinches instinctively at the name, before the information connects. “Which means that there is finally a chance to get that damn mark off. I’m a seal master, so is Tobirama-sama, and Sensei’s personal ANBU was the one who came up with the counter Hatake used on the Uchiha brat. I know you’ve been wanting to get rid of the thing for years, so what do you say Mitarashi-san?”

(Jiraya, Kagami remembers, has always tried to keep a certain amount of distance between himself and Anko. Not because he doesn’t trust her, but because he feels he failed her, by not noticing Orochimaru’s fall earlier, by not noticing she and her team-mates had needed saving before it was too late. His work on the cursed seal had been a penance of sort. It’s too late for her team-mates, two clan-less children who didn’t survive the seals application, but he can still help her now.)

The look of wary hope on Anko’s face does not surprise him.

“If you are playing with me…” She threatens.

“On my student’s memory.” Jiraya tells her quietly.

Anko takes a deep breath, nods, then turns to face Kagami.

“If I do this” she says quietly. “I need to know who you are.”

Kagami hears Jiraya inhale sharply, ready to protest, but he holds up a hand to stop him.

“With the agreement from all present in this room that my identity stays between us unless the Hokage agrees to reveal it.” He states clearly.

Once Ibiki and Anko have sworn to keep his identity secret, Kagami reaches up and removes his mask.

“Uchiha Kagami” He introduces himself. “I was a genin under Uzumaki Mito-sama, and on the Hokage’s guard team under the Nidaime Hokage. I have been a ghost for over twenty years as I investigated Shimura Danzo’s actions and the formation of Ne.”

To everyone’s surprise, Anko cackles.

“You owe me a thousand ryo, ‘Biki!” she laughs. “Told you there was an adult Uchiha running around still!”

The head of T&I sighs longsufferingly.

“Can you do it ?” He asks instead, looking straight at Kagami.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.” he answers calmly. “I’ve been working on that bloody seal ever since the Yondaime decided that I was going to learn sealing. The seal Minato put above yours was the result of our collaboration, but at the time we’d realized that unless the snake finally bit the dust, nothing we did could erase the seal. But we did think about how we would go about it, and I’m willing to try if you are.”

The lone kunoichi in the rooms takes a breath, then releases it.

“Okay.” She says. “Get that thing off.”

* * *

It takes them just under three hours, Jiraya and Tobirama helping Kagami as he explains the seal Minato and he came up with over a decade ago. It’s a work of art, the culmination of months of work after they had realized that the seal was still actively hurting the young genin who had stumbled back into the village with no memory of the past few months and the burning ache of betrayal.

Kagami focuses on the seal, ignores the looks Tobirama is shooting him, ignores the admirative glances of Jiraya and the hidden grief in the man’s eyes.

He’s still angry, still furious with Tobirama, but he channels his anger into the precise strokes of the brush needed to trace the seal on Anko’s back. When he’s finally finished, he hands her something to bite on and slaps a chakra-glowing hand on the center of the seal.

She screams, pain racking through her frame, but soon enough she stops in shock and wonder.

“There. Now you don’t need to worry about the damn thing anymore” Kagami gruffs out as he stretches. “And don’t even think about thanking me, brat. That was an insult to sealing. It was my duty to get rid of it.”

He heads for the door before the young woman can react, and is out of the office by the time Jiraya and Tobirama catch up with him.

“She’s going to be hounding you until you accept her thanks” The Sennin warns him.

“Good luck with that” Kagami mutters, mask back in place as he walks briskly towards the Hokage tower. Night has fallen, now, and civilians are trickling back into the village from the shelters.

“Any particular reason we’re heading back to the Tower, or do you just want to hound sensei some more about his slack in training?” the Toad-Summoner asks wryly.

“He deserves it, the beginning of his fight against Orochimaru was pathetic. I don’t know how he fought afterwards, but the man was winded after five minutes!”

“Well, he _is_ seventy, you know.”

Kagami snorts. “I’m sixty-eight, as is Torifu. Homura’s seventy, and Koharu is seventy-one, though don’t spread it around or she’ll have my head and yours. Age is not an excuse. He let himself go during his retirement, and didn’t up his training after retaking the hat. A minimum of training was required, to at least keep in shape. And to answer your earlier question, I still need to deal with Danzo and I would rather do so sooner than later.”

Jiraya winces at that, as does Tobirama.

“What happened, Kagami?” The second Hokage asks quietly as they take to the roofs. “When I was last… here, Danzo had only begun to oppose Saru from the shadows. What happened?”

* * *

Kagami pauses, stops, and closes his eyes. He should have expected this, especially after his rant on top of the Kage's box earlier today. But the question still hits him hard.

“He built his own organisation, Root, by kidnapping orphans and clans members and brainwashing them into perfect little weapons” the Uchiha answers, face cold. “Stole children from their parents, arranged for ‘accidental’ deaths of influential shinobis he didn’t approve of and came in afterwards to take their kids. Chikara’s student, Hatake Sakumo, was one of his victims. Oh he didn’t kill him directly, but he orchestrated a whisper campaign against him after he failed a mission in order to protect his comrades. Sakumo committed suicide and was found by his five year old son. Had Minato not already been training the kid, I’ve got no doubt Kakashi would have ended up in Danzo’s clutches too. Saru officially condemned it and forced him to shut down Root, but we both knew that it still existed. Orochimaru, for all that the man had the ethics of a rock, would probably not have resorted to experimenting on children if Danzo had not come to him to offer them, for all that he left no proof behind.”

He takes a breath.

“Then he started targeting the Uchiha. He had already been avoiding me for some time at that point, not that I noticed at first. It was subtle, but slowly the clan was forced to retreat behind the clan walls. Ostensibly so that we could be closer to the Police force building. Villagers would turn cold towards us, because we were rumored to be arrogant stuck ups who thought themselves better than common folk - now don’t get me wrong, some of them did act like they had a stick in the arse, but not all of them, far from it. They started to fear us, even if they did respect our prowesses. Fellow shinobi grew resentful of the sharingan, accusing us of cheating and stealing their techniques. Then came the Kyuubi attack. Everything seemed to play against the clan that night. By orders of the council, most of the police force and of our shinobis were assigned to the protection of the shelters, because we were a familiar face for the civilians. As a result, we suffered far less deaths than other clans.”

His breath hitches as he remembers his son, remembers Shuichi lying on a hospital bed, half of his face burned off.

“There were also suspicions that an Uchiha was behind the attack, since everybody and their pet fish remembered that Madara had been able to use his Sharingan to control the beast. So people were asking where we were, why we hadn’t used our Sharingans to stop the biju… Resentment was growing on both side of the divide, and soon rumors of a planned coup were circulating inside the clan. Shisui was infiltrating Root at the time, though he still reported to both Saru and myself. The clan Heir, Itachi, joined ANBU at thirteen and also joined our efforts to calm the situation. Except it wasn’t to be. Someone was agitating the clan, using their sharingan to do so - not a current clan member, Itachi couldn’t recognize his chakra signature, and Danzo was countering our efforts on the village side. Shisui was going to use his mangekyo against Uchiha Fugaku, the clan head, to stop the coup in its track, but Danzo attacked him. He managed to steal one of Shisui’s eyes, and nearly killed him before he could escape. At the same time, Itachi had met the agitator, the Madara-wannabe, who was willing to ‘help’ him with the last resort solution - a culling of the coup instigators. Shisui tried to give his remaining eye to Itachi and then commit suicide, because he is a fucking moron, but Itachi brought him to me in time to transplant his eye back and save his sorry hide.”

Another deep breath. Shisui’s pale face will never leave his mind, both eyes empty with crimson blood staining his skin.

“We had a plan in place to protect the children and those of the adults who had nothing to do with the coup, but before we could the Madara wannabe slaughtered them all. Itachi took the blame, joined the mad hatter's organisation of S-class nukenin trying to gather all the bijuus, and Danzo stole the sharingans of my dead clan members. We lost the entire clan that night, except for one child who is convinced the brother he once adored murdered his entire family. Itachi is officially a nukenin, Shisui and I are officially dead, and the Madara wanna-be, while definitely an Uchiha - I saw his mangekyo when he attacked Minato and Kushina - is a rogue one.”

That night will always haunt him, Kagami knows, just as much as the Kyuubi attack haunts him, just as much as Tobirama’s death haunts him.

“After that, Danzo kept himself mostly to black ops style missions. We tried to keep an eye on the orphanages, but odds are some kids still ended up in his little group. As far as we know, he has no idea Shisui and I survived, and he mostly stayed away from Sasuke - Saru was keeping a close watch on him after what happened, and the kid might still become a flight risk at the slightest mention of Itachi. But Shisui had to deal with three Root agents trying to abduct the brat while he was unconscious after his fight with the jinchuuriki of the Ichibi.”

Enough is enough, he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say how he panicked at the idea that his grandson had had to fight these men, how the image of the last time he had confronted the underground organisation had superposed itself over the image of his pissed off grandson ranting about Root.

“The only reason the man isn’t dead yet is that I want my fucking answers” he says instead. “I would have killed him after the massacre, but loath as I am to admit it he wasn’t entirely responsible for that massive clusterfuck, and he still had his uses. That, and Saru insisted.”

Tobirama nods slightly, though Kagami can feel the unease in his chakra. Danzo had been his student, once, not one of his genins but one of the chunins and jounins that he had taken on his own team as the Hokage. He had been a trusted friend, someone you could trust to have your back, and avenge you should he fail. This is not going to be easy for the albino Senju, but Kagami is pleased to note that he hasn’t tried to convince him not to kill the Shimura. But then again, Tobirama had always been the most practical of the two brothers, not as likely to be swayed by emotions (except, apparently, when Kagami is involved, and they will have a long conversation about that as soon as they can find some time alone - as soon as Kagami feels ready to be alone with him, because at the moment a large part of him is still wanting to run and hide), and if there’s one thing Tobirama has always been good at it’s being ruthless. That doesn’t mean he’s not hurt by Danzo’s devolution, that he does not grieve at the realisation that they’ll have to execute the man, but he can see the reasoning behind it and would do it himself if asked.

Neither Kagami nor Torifu will ask it of him. Danzo is their teammate, their problem, their responsibility.

(Their failure, too, because they must have missed something, done something wrong, to not see what path he was taking in time to stop him.)

(Kagami knows he’ll never forgive Danzo for what he’s done. He also knows he’ll never forgive himself for not noticing beforehand and not being able to stop him.)

(Torifu, Kagami knows, feels the same, even if he didn’t have pay for it with the quasi-totality of his clan.)


	6. Fuck that noise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course Kagami is still angry at him. Of course he’s still far from ready to deal with the mess that is the Edo Tensei and its consequences. His little breakdown in the Hokage’s office earlier today had not even started to quell his rage.
> 
> Not even a little.
> 
> But… Kagami is tired. Bone-deep tired, the kind of fatigue that accumulates over the years and then hits you all at once, and the only thing he wants to do right now is sleep.
> 
> (Damn Koharu for making him aware of his lack of rest, for forcing him to acknowledge it and allowing it to hit him hard.)
> 
> He just can’t deal with Tobirama right now.
> 
> Fuck that noise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everybody, and welcome to a new chapter of the Aftermath!  
> Warning for this chapter include:  
> \- heart and health problems  
> \- a profanity warning due to Kagami being absolutelz DONE with this shit TM  
> \- a panic/anxiety attack  
> \- bone-deep exhaustion
> 
> Hope you'll like it! Don't hesitate to leave me a comment about it, I'm not entirely satisfied with this chapter, so all constructive criticism is welcome!  
> (Flames will be aimed at the huge paperwork pile on the Hokage's desk)

They walk the rest of the way in subdued silence, Tobirama trying to digest the information Kagami just dumped on him, and Jiraya trying to come to terms with the role Danzo had played in his teammate treachery.

Kagami, meanwhile, is ignoring them both and trying to focus on the imminent confrontation with his former genin teammate, but he keeps getting distracted by thoughts of the future.

He hadn’t been lying when he told them that the resurrected Kage could theoretically remain as long as they wanted. He wouldn’t recommend it, for a number of reasons, including, but not limited to, the fact that they would have to grieve for them again, but he can’t deny that having them on hand would be useful either.

It is way past time for Tsunade-chan to come home, after all. And since Hashirama is there anyway, Kagami is seriously considering sicking him on the Madara wannabe like one of Hatake’s dogs. Taking down the madmen that were the Akatsuki members would be easier with the might of two Kage behind him… If nothing else, watching the mokuton user glomp the Madara wannabe (there is no way the guy is the real thing. Being influenced by the bastard in chief, however, is still a possibility. Kagami knows better than anyone that death doesn’t mean much to an Uchiha with a grudge) should be pretty entertaining, and provide a suitable distraction while he and Itachi deal with the rest of the freak squad.

(To be honest, as much as he respects the First Hokage, he would feel much better if Mito had been brought back instead. Sure, Hashirama has the Mokuton going for him, but his wife had been terrifying with seals, and from what Itachi had managed to report, seals will definitely be needed to deal with some of the nukenins in that organisation.)

(Rinnegan? Seriously? How is this Kagami’s life? What did he do in a previous life to deserve this?)

(Actually, on second thoughts, Mito had been terrifying, period, and if it weren’t for the fact that he can’t even think about that damn jutsu without wanting to puke, he would be bringing her back from the dead just to keep the other two in line.)

(There is a reason she survived her husband, her brother in law, her village and her entire clan save one little girl, and a reason why the Kyuubi never managed to break out of her.)

(Uzumaki Mito had been Kagami’s hero, and he wants to rage at the village hidden in the leaf for reducing her memory to ‘the Shodaime’s wife’. She had been so much more than that, and he misses her fiercely.)

(She had also been the one to tell him to get his head out of his ass when it came to his feelings for Tobirama, and the one to threaten the Nidaime with bodily harm should he ever hurt Kagami.)

(None of this bullshit with Danzo, with Orochimaru, with Tsunade, would have happened if Mito had still been alive, of that Kagami is certain.)

* * *

 

By the time they reach Saru’s office, the Sandaime is getting to the bottom of his pile of paperwork, and Koharu is watching him eagle-eyed to make sure he does not miss one. There’s a radio in her ear, and Kagami guesses that she’s simultaneously keeping an eye on the Hokage (especially now that it has been proven that said Hokage is not actually in top fighting shape) and coordinating with ANBU HQ.

“Mitarashi is officially seal-free” the oldest Uchiha in the village announces as he enters the room. “And good riddance to the blasted thing. How are things on your side?”

“Civilians are being allowed back into their homes. Shodaime-sama and Tenzo-kun have been rebuilding the most damaged areas of the village. ANBU has nearly two hundred sound nins in custody, as well as one hundred and twelve sand nins and is currently interrogating them with the help of T&I. A few of them are sporting a cursed seal, most notably the four that were holding the barrier around the Kage’s box. They’re sedated for now, but if you could take a look at them tomorrow it would be appreciated.”

She looks at him from over her glasses.

“Shisui is at the hospital, keeping an eye on the kids. He’s going to crash at Torifu’s place once he’s relieved by Neko. Hashirama-sama will stay at the Sarutobi compound for now, we’ll discuss how to announce their presence tomorrow afternoon.”

She strides towards him, and stops close enough to touch, arms crossed, while Jiraya goes to talk with the third Hokage.

“Since I have a pretty good idea of what you’re actually here for, here you go. Danzo has been brought to a secure room in T&I. Shiranui is keeping an eye on him, and Tenzo will join him once he’s done rebuilding. You  _ will _ wait until tomorrow to confront him. Do  _ not _ test me on this, Uchiha. Torifu agrees with me this time. It has been a long day for everyone involved, and to be honest Torifu, Saru and I still have much to do before we can even think of going to bed, much less deal with Danzo. And no, you can’t help us. What you can do is drag yourself home and get some rest. You haven’t slept in three days, and you nearly had a heart attack a few hours ago. I am not taking no for an answer this time.”

Kagami bristles at that, hackles rising. “Utatane…” He growls.

“Danzo will remain unconscious as long as you don’t release the jutsu, according to what your grandson told us.” She counters implacably. “It’s nearly one in the morning, you’ve been up and running for the past three days, you’ve performed what I’ve been told are ‘fuinjutsu miracles’, you fought a group of Sound Jounins, nearly had a heart attack and proceeded to do yet another sealing miracle with Mitarashi. You’re benched, Uchiha, until you’ve gotten some rest.”

Kagami wants to protest, he really wants to, but… loath as he is to admit it, Koharu is right. He is exhausted, has been for years now, and a good night’s sleep sounds heavenly right now.

He still opens his mouth to protest, but she shuts him up with a glare and a raised finger.

“Go. Home.” She orders. “Don’t you dare show your face here until you’ve had at least eight hours of rest. We’re not as young as we used to be, Uchiha, and I’ll not have your death on my conscience. Go home, get some sleep, and get yourself checked out by a medic tomorrow morning. Once you’ve done that, we will deal with Danzo.”

With a snarl, Kagami whirls around and leaves, slamming the door behind him as he does so. He doesn’t look back to see if Tobirama follows him.

(Please don’t, please don’t, his mind chants relentlessly. He’s not ready to have that kind of conversation with Tobirama, not now, not ever if he has his way, and especially not with Tobi looking exactly as he did the last time Kagami saw him alive, not a day over forty-five, while Kagami is well aware of his own age and of the traces time and grief left on his body and his soul.)

* * *

He reaches his flat and locks the door behind him. Not that it would stop any halfway decent academy student, but that’s what the seals hidden under the paint of every single wall are for.

He stalks to the bathroom, turns on the shower and steps into it fully dressed. The cold water crashes on him, and he slides down the wall to sit on the floor.

Fuck that noise.

Fuck the past few days, fuck Orochimaru’s delusions of grandeur, fuck Tobirama for inventing the bloody jutsu in the first place, and fuck Utatane for ordering him around like a child.

(Fuck the fact that she is right, that he hasn’t slept in days, that he isn’t as young as he once was, and that he nearly died earlier today from something as mundane as a heart attack.)

(Fuck the fact that the water rushing down his face isn’t only coming from the shower.)

(Fuck the fact that his shivers aren’t only due to the cold water, but that he’s shaking all over now that the sheer enormity of what happened crashes down on him.)

Fuck that noise.

* * *

The water is slowly warming up now, and Kagami leans his head back across the wall.

He doesn’t know how much of this he can’t take. Loathe as he is to admit it, Koharu had a point when she said that his heart probably can’t take much more of this bullshit.

He’s sixty-eight, and of the six of them who once were on the Nidaime’s guard, he is the only one who is still an active ninja. Saru does mostly desk work nowadays, as was made clear by his rather pathetic showing, Homura is busy playing with the civilian council, and Koharu and Torifu, while still the leaders of ANBU, hadn’t been in the field since the Kyuubi disaster before today. Danzo, as is now clear, was too busy playing puppet master in the shadows to keep up with the more physical part of the ninja life.

But Kagami? Kagami has been mission-bound since he was ten, and hasn’t stopped except to take care of Shisui after the massacre. He’s the Hokage’s bodyguard, his eyes and ears inside Konoha’s walls, he’s the last adult Uchiha with full knowledge of their techniques and traditions and he’s been teaching Shisui, because despite what the clan became, legacies are important.

Kagami wakes up every morning at five and trains until eight, takes his shift at Saru’s side, checks up on Minato’s son and on Sasuke, trains with Shisui, takes the occasional mission for the ANBU corps, and tries to get at least the basic notions of sealing to stick into the new recruits. He avoids sleep as much as he can, more comfortable with the nightmares of life than those of sleep, and spends his nights devising new seals and new techniques, learning new taijutsu forms to compensate for the speed and agility age is slowly leeching off him. He looks into the mystery that is the rogue Uchiha (and if he is making a list of ways to make him pay for everything he did to Kagami’s precious people, no one needs to know) and tries to trace back his past actions, to find out what his goals are and how to stop him.

He hasn’t had more than five hours of sleep a night in the past forty years at least, and he can’t deny the considerable amount of stress he has been under (nor the the considerable amount of stress he put himself through on his own). Is it any wonder, really, that his heart is starting to feel the strain?

(He has known it was a risk for decades now, ever since Torifu dragged him to see one of ANBU’s medics after a mission gone wrong. He’s been ignoring it for just as long, mostly because he never thought he would live long enough for that to be a problem.)

(That had been his reaction to many things, actually)

(He should have realised that the Universe hated him enough to do just that.)

He’s drenched to the bones by now, hot water still falling on him, and he brings his knees up to his chest and buries his head in them.

Fuck.

What is he doing?

He can’t think straight, everything is a blur and the events of today are smashing into him like an Akimichi into a platoon of enemy shinobi: with speed, force, and a lot of damage.

He needs to calm down. To breath. To quiet the cacophony that are his thoughts enough to actually  _ think _ .

Facts. He needs to focus on the facts, to take away the emotional component that always turn him into a mess.

Fact. Orochimaru led an invasion on Konoha, along with Suna.

Fact. They found out before the fact, and were able to prepare.

Fact. Casualties were limited thanks to that.

Fact. There were still far too many casualties. ( _ No, stop, don’t think about that.) _

Fact. Suna brought an unstable jinchuuriki to the chunin exam.

Fact. Orochimaru was focused on Saru. ( _ Told him so years ago.) _

Fact. Saru let his training slip to unacceptable levels.

Fact. Orochimaru somehow got his scaly hands on the Edo Tensei and actually managed to use it.

Fact. Orochimaru then proceeded to use it to someone the first, second and third Hokage, though Saru stopped the last one from manifesting.

Fact. Kagami managed to free the two resurrected Kages from the jutsu.

Fact. Tobirama and Hashirama Senju are back amongst the living for an indefinite amount of time, thanks to Kagami’s own handiwork. ( _No, he needs to push that aside, he can’t think about it now.)_

Fact. Saru finally dealt with his wayward student.

Fact. The invasion is over and Konoha won. ( _But at what price?_ )

Fact. He has finally been able to do something about Mitarashi’s seal, and Sasuke’s is next on his list.

Fact. Danzo overstepped for the last time. ( _No, he can’t afford to think about that now either, not with the way his heartbeat goes frantic at the slightest thought of his former teammate.)_

Fact. His heart is seriously weakened, and he definitely needs to go and see a medic. And a damn good one.

Fact. He’s probably not the only one who’s going to need a damn good medic in the months to come.

(Because troubles always seemed to follow the Senju brothers in life, so Kagami knows it’s only a matter of time)

(And a medic needs to check on the two resurrected men anyway. Kagami studied the seal for  _ decades _ , and he  _ still _ doesn’t understand how you can bring someone back to life into somebody else’s body and have that body change shape to reflect the person brought back.)

(He’s pretty sure that Hashirama was brought back to live using that sound girl from the chunin exams, Kin, and how does  _ that _ work?)

Fact. The best goddamn medic in the world is a woman who ran away from the village years ago.

Fact. Saru needs a successor before he works himself into the grave.

Fact. Jiraya will never be Hokage unless he is the last choice they have. For all that he once dreamed of the position, the boy had realized long ago that he wasn’t made for it.

(Watching his teammate devolve when he was refused the hat had cemented his belief that he did not have the right temperament to lead the village. He hasn’t been in Konoha proper more than fifteen days since the Kyuubi rampage, not until Saru called him back when they got wind of Orochimaru’s plans)

Fact. No one else in Konoha seems ready to take up the post. Nara Shikaku might be a good fit, but he doesn’t have the necessary reputation. Hatake has the reputation, but would be an absolute disaster of a Hokage.

Fact. They need Tsunade to come back to Konoha.

* * *

 

Kagami’s breathing finally calms down as he focuses on what to do next. Bringing Tsunade back had crossed his mind earlier today, but now it seems that getting her to come back to the village is going to be one of his priorities.

It’s not quite a plan, barely the idea of one, but it allows him to regain his bearings and to calm his stuttering heartbeat.

It’s not quite a plan, but it’s something, and he’s going to suggest it to Saru tomorrow if the old monkey hasn’t already thought about it.

Tomorrow. After Kagami has had a chance to sleep a bit (or try at least), to eat something, and to consult with Magpie about his health.

(The ANBU is one of the least annoying medics he’s had the misfortune of dealing with, and while he can expect some barbs to be thrown his way about the lackluster care he takes of himself, he can also expect to trade some sarcastic remarks about the general state of the village with her, and set her on Saru once she’s done examining him. Log knows the man avoids medics like the plague unless his daughter guilt-trips him into it.)

With a sigh, he hauls himself up and turns off the water. His clothes are soaked through, and he pulls them off and lets them fall on the floor. Grabbing a towel, he quickly dries himself before putting on a pair of sweatpants and heading out of the bathroom.

His seals haven’t been broken, and yet he’s not surprised to find Tobirama standing in his living room. The Senju seems perfectly at ease, but Kagami knows better, can see the nervousness and the tension in the way Tobirama is standing perfectly still. He wants to snipe at the man, remind him that he’s breaking and entering, but he can’t bring himself to do so.

Of course Kagami is still angry at him. Of course he’s still far from ready to deal with the mess that is the Edo Tensei and its consequences. His little breakdown in the Hokage’s office earlier today had not even started to quell his rage.

Not even a little.

But… Kagami is tired. Bone-deep tired, the kind of fatigue that accumulates over the years and then hits you all at once, and the only thing he wants to do right now is sleep.

(Damn Koharu for making him aware of his lack of rest, for forcing him to acknowledge it and allowing it to hit him hard.)

He just can’t deal with Tobirama right now.

_ Fuck that noise. _

“I’m going to sleep.” He tells the Nidaime shortly. “If you’re going to break into my flat anyway, you might as well take the couch.”

And with that, he heads straight to his room, closes the door and drops face first onto his bed.

Fuck that noise.


	7. Realisation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A visit to Sparrow would definitely not go amiss, Kagami admits with a wry smile as he lets himself into ANBU HQ. Log knows the therapist would get a kick out of the mess that is his life at the moment (they may or may not have invented a drinking game based on the clusterfuck that Kagami’s life has the tendency to turn into at the most random of times). Sparrow isn’t his original therapist (the man passed away during the last great shinobi war), but he’s been invaluable in the past twenty years.
> 
> But for now, he has another healthcare specialist to visit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!  
> It's been nearly a year since I last updated this, and I want to apologize for the lateness of this chapter. I tend to binge-write when I start a story, writing around 20.000 words in a few days, and then my mind goes blank for this particular story and it takes me a while to get back to it.
> 
> I'm not promising another update pretty soon, but I do promise to try not to take a year to write the next chapter!
> 
> Thank you to everyone who left comments in the past few months - you're what convinced me to kick my ass into gear and get some writing done for this story.
> 
> I hope this chapter will be to your liking! No progress on the Tobirama/Kagami front, except when it comes to avoiding the elephant in the room and Kagami getting himself a doctor's note to avoid the biggest stress factor in his life, but the plot (yes, I do have a plot that goes beyond putting Kagami through angst and back) progresses slightly as I deal with something that has bugged me since I first heard that the Uchiha slaughter had been sanctionned by the Hokage and Co.
> 
> Aka: Why the fuck would you even think of doing something that stupid?

He wakes up a full ten hours later, feeling fully rested for the first time in decades. 

Utatane might have had a point about his exhaustion levels. Not that he’s ever going to admit it out loud, much less to her face.

With a sigh, Kagami stretches his arms before leaving his bed. A quick check with his chakra senses tells him that Tobirama is still in his living room. He’s awake, though still lying on the couch.

Yeah. Not dealing with that particular can of worms right now, no thanks.

He showers quickly, and puts on a clean uniform. His mask hangs at his belt as he passes his head through the living room door, ready to be put on as soon as he reaches the door.

“I’m going to ANBU HQ. I’ll be in Saru’s T&I office at noon at the latest.”

And with that, he’s gone before Tobirama has a chance to answer.

If he stays any longer, Kagami knows, he’ll forget all the reasons he has for putting a wall between them, and he will end up in his soulmate’s arms. And he knows himself enough to know that right now, this is pretty much the worst thing he could do to himself. He is angry, and he has a right to be angry. He deserves an explanation, a full honest explanation and not the half-truth Tobirama told the others. He deserves time to adjust to Tobirama’s abrupt return, deserves time to deal with his own repulsion at the fact that the man was brought back from the dead, that his body isn’t even really his body, and that Tobirama was fully prepared to be resurrected from the start.

Without consideration for Kagami’s own feelings on the matter (and log knows he had been vocal enough about his opposition to the very idea of the Edo Tensei when it was first brought up, there is no way, absolutely no way that Tobirama hadn’t known exactly how Kagami felt about this jutsu).

And that’s actually what hurts the most. That Tobirama had known exactly how Kagami felt on the matter, and had done it anyway. Even after Kagami had stated multiple times that he was never going to use this jutsu, and that he never, ever wanted anyone to use it on him or for him.

It’s one of the few things they ever fought about, and it hurts that Tobirama couldn’t respect his opinion on the matter.

Then again, Kagami scowls as he jumps to another rooftop, one could argue that it was Tobirama’s choice in the first place, and that Kagami should be respecting it.

Usually, Kagami would make an effort to try and look at things from another’s point of view. But this time, he’s not going to budge until he gets a honest to log apology. And a long, painful, emotional conversation with the albino man.

And that will have to wait until Kagami himself has had time to deal with what had happened, and to deal with the psychological impact of it all. Because he may be old, but he’s certainly not stupid, and he knows himself well enough to know that this is not something he can do on his own, in his current state of mind.

Many people had been confused by the fact that Kagami had always seemed so well-adjusted, compared to his clan. The Uchiha, after all, had been rather infamous for producing strong, but mentally unbalanced shinobis.

And Kagami has always been more emotional than the average Uchiha. Prompt to love, but also prompt to hate. He’s always been aware of this fact, but it had been driven home to him by his then clan-head losing it, trying to unleash the Kyuubi onto the village and ultimately forcing Mito-sensei into sealing it into her own body.

Many had simply looked at his teacher, and decided that’s where the differences lay.

They had been wrong.

And the last thing Kagami had wanted was to end up like his relative.

So he’d made it a habit, from a young age, to actually think before acting, to meditate from time to time, as Mito-sensei taught him to.

The thing that helps him the most, though, and it would have been a huge point of contention with the clan had he told anybody about it at the time, is that Kagami has had weekly meetings with an ANBU-certified therapist ever since he turned twelve. Mito had recommended it, when he had come to her for advice on how to deal with his temper and other strong emotions.

Kagami calls it common sense, really. Emotions have long been lauded as the weakness of the Uchiha, everyone knowing that strong emotions create an unbalance in their psyche that leads to the awakening of the Sharingan, and a risk of madness. He grew up with Madara leading the clan, and if there was ever an example of what an unstable, emotional Uchiha was like, that was it.

He’s pretty sure that’s the only reason he didn’t do something stupid when Tobirama disappeared, and he’s certain that it’s the only reason he was in any fit state to care for Shisui after losing his entire clan.

A visit to Sparrow would definitely not go amiss, Kagami admits with a wry smile as he lets himself into ANBU HQ. Log knows the therapist would get a kick out of the mess that is his life at the moment (they may or may not have invented a drinking game based on the clusterfuck that Kagami’s life has the tendency to turn into at the most random of times). Sparrow isn’t his original therapist (the man passed away during the last great shinobi war), but he’s been invaluable in the past twenty years.

But for now, he has another healthcare specialist to visit.

He opens an unmarked door and ducks the acupuncture needle aimed for his neck.

“What’s this I hear about you nearly croaking in the big man’s office, old fossil?” A green-haired woman glares at him from where she’s sitting behind her desk. “Close the door, mask off and on the bed with you.”

“I didn’t ‘nearly croak’” Kagami protests. “I had a perfectly justified moment where I felt slightly light-headed.”

“Can it, old man. When it comes to your health, I trust Utatane-taicho more than you. And she distinctly described the symptoms of a minor heart attack combined with a severe panic attack. And I told you ages ago that your old man’s heart can’t take too much more of those. You should have come to see me straight away. Of course, you never listen to me anyway and you’re still gallivanting around playing ninja when you should have retired from active service decades ago, because Log knows you don’t know how to take care of yourself and refuse to listen to reason.”

Wincing, Kagami sits down on the examination bed and takes his mask off. Magpie is livid, is furious, and it never ends well for him when she is like this. He takes his shirt off and watches as her hands glow green.

“I’m serious, Karasu-oji. Your heart can’t take many more shocks like these.” She tells him gruffly. “I get that it wasn’t your fault this time, but you should really retire from active services. You’re not half-bad as a med-nin, and Log knows you know more about seals than the entire corps together. You have options.”

“Not going to happen until that madman is dealt with” Kagami growls, then twitches as she pinches him. “He’s a rogue Uchiha with a Mangekyo sharingan, Magpie. He’s my responsibility.”

“You’re half-dead, that’s what you are” she grumbles. “No immediate risk of another heart attack, and no obvious sequels from the last one, but you need rest, old man. You’re benched from combat until further notice.”

“What about search and retrieval?” He asks, putting his shirt back on.

The medic stills.

“Thinking of seeing another iryo-nin behind my back?” She asks, tone teasing but wary.

“More like thinking about setting her on Saru” He throws back. “He let his training slip so far it’s inacceptable. Winded after five minutes of light sparring against Orochimaru. Pathetic, really.”

She snorts.

“How likely is she to punch you in the face for even suggesting that she heads back to Konoha?” The medic asks, eyebrow arched.

“I’m planning on taking two perfectly adequate meat shields” He justifies himself. “Pretty sure she can wail on them all she wants and they still won’t have a scratch once she’s done. Plus, they both need to be examined by a medic anyway.”

“And you couldn’t pay me enough to do that” Magpie shudders. “No offence meant, but well. The dead should stay dead, that’s all I’m saying. I’m not against medical miracles - Log knows I’ve had to perform a few over the years, most of them on your stubborn ass for some unknown reason - but when they’ve been dead for over four decades, I call bullshit.”

“You and me both” Kagami mutters darkly. “But they’re here, and they’re here to stay for a while it seems, so we might as well see if they want to make themselves useful. And let’s be honest, there’s quite a few things that could use their skill sets.”

The woman nods, even as she jots a few notes in code on his medical file.

“Anyway, you’re good to go as long as you avoid high stress situations for the next few weeks. Which means no combat, no sparring, only light training - my definition of ‘light training’, not yours - and staying away from stress-inducing factors if you can, which, knowing you, will probably be impossible, but at least I’ll be able to say that I tried. I’m giving you a prescription for some medicine, which you  _ will _ take every morning or else I’ll hunt you down and kill you myself.”

Her smile is predatory, and Kagami makes a mental note to at least try to take better care of himself in the coming weeks, since everyone seems to be ganging up on him to do so anyway. Then again, she was also handing him the perfect excuse to avoid being alone with Tobirama any time soon, so maybe she wasn’t as angry as she pretended to be.

(Or maybe she was seriously worried about his health, and thought that snubbing the freak resurrection of the second Hokage mattered less than his well-being. Kagami was touched, really.)

With a nod in her direction, he leaves her office, mask back on his face, and wanders down the twisting corridors of ANBU HQ. His steps lead him to another nondescript office door, and he sends a flare of chakra into the nearly invisible seal on the handle.

“Come in” a tired voice greets him.

“You know” Kagami says lightly, closing the door behind him. “Given that you’re actually older than I am, maybe I should be the one telling you to get some rest.”

“Har har har” Torifu snarks back without looking up from the report in front of him. “You’re hilarious. What did Magpie say?”

“Benched from combat missions and sparring, light training only, medicine every morning, and I need to avoid high stress situations if I can, doctor’s order. Speaking of that, who is responsible for Tobirama turning up at my place yesterday?”

“Koharu” the Akimichi throws back without missing a beat. “Thought you two could use a talk. I told her it wouldn’t work. Did it ?”

“Of course not” Kagami snorts. “I actually did what I was told for once and went straight to bed. Tell your evil twin to stay out of my business.”

“Tell her yourself. I got maybe three hours of sleep, and I don’t think she allowed herself to get any. She’s on mandatory three-days leave once we get all this shit sorted out.”

“Oh, I bet this will go over well when you tell her.” Kagami smirks behind his mask. He loved it when karma took care of his petty revenges in his stead.

Finally looking up from his report, Torifu glances at the clock and stretches.

“Quarter to noon already? What time are we supposed to meet with Saru and the others to discuss Danzo?”

“Noon, actually. And by ‘discuss’ I expect you mean ‘interrogate, followed by execute’.”

“Don’t look too excited about it” Torifu sighs, standing up tiredly and putting his mask on. “What did we miss, Kagami? At what point was it too late to bring him back from the shadows?”

“You think I haven’t been asking myself the same questions for the past seven years?” Kagami asks wryly. “I expect the only way we’ll ever know is if he tells us. Which he won’t have a chance to unless we actually get a move on.”

“Keep your pants on” Torifu retorts, grabbing his weapons pouch and fastening it to his leg. “It’s not like he’s going anywhere.”

“I want to get this over with.” Kagami answers, opening the door for his old friend. “This crap has been going on long enough already. We should have done something years ago, preferably before the backstabber got my entire clan killed with his stupid rumor-mongering! Why didn’t we, Ryuu? ” He asks, switching to Torifu’s codename seamlessly.

Torifu sighs, and briefly puts an arm around his friend’s shoulders.

“Saru asked us not to.”

“He should have known better! Hell, I should have known better! He ordered the assassination of an entire clan, Ryuu! How the hell did we let that happen without consequences?”

They start walking towards the Torture and Interrogation building. They’re about half-way there when Kagami freezes in realisation.

“Shit. Shit shit shit shit!”

“Karasu?”

“Not here. We need to get to T&I. Now!”

They take to the roofs, Torifu keeping up without problems. Kagami’s mind is working furiously, tearing apart something that had frustrated him to no end for years.

Why hadn’t they stopped Danzo before? At the very least, the Uchiha massacre should have seen his old genin teammate executed. Kagami should have killed him himself, if not after he attacked and nearly killed Shisui then definitely after he forced Itachi to slaughter the rest of the clan. He had wanted to, that much he remembers, he had even gone to Saru’s office immediately after stabilizing Shisui and…

Danzo had taken Shisui’s eye by force, but he had already possessed another Sharingan before that - this is what caused Shisui to lose so badly against the elder in the first place. Izanagi. Being able to erase the actions that caused a death, at the cost of an eye. But Shisui’s eye? Shisui’s eye had been capable of so much more. Kotoamatsukami. The ultimate genjutsu, one that allows the user to enter the mind of any individual within their field of view, and manipulate them by giving them false experiences, making it seem as if they were doing things of their own free will. One would never know that they had been manipulated, as it would appear that they had made the decisions themselves.

And as it could influence anyone within the user’s field of view, even Kagami’s anonymity as a simple ANBU hadn’t protected him.

He clenches his fists, blood dripping from where his nails have pierced the skin of his palms. He still doesn’t know which Uchiha it was that Danzo stole his first Sharingan from. He may never know. But Danzo stole his grandson’s eye and used it against them, against Saru who would never have sanctioned a full-on massacre, against Koharu and Homura who would never have approved such a drastic measure, against Torifu who would never have put his ANBU in this position, and against Kagami who had only ever wanted to protect his village and his clan.

Danzo will die today.

Danzo will die today.

It will be slow, and long, and painful, and it still won’t hurt nearly as much as this betrayal.

* * *

 

Kagami storms into the Hokage’s private office, deep in the confines of T&I, Torifu hot on his heels.

Saru is already there, standing by the table with the Senju brothers while Jiraya is in quiet discussion with Koharu and Homura. Kagami ignores them all, making a bee-line for his grandson who is leaning against the wall, looking pale but determined.

He grabs him into a fierce hug, and doesn’t let go even when the younger man lets out a startled breath.

“Kagami-jii?” Shisui whispers worriedly. “What happened?”

In the background, he can hear Saru ask the same of Torifu, and the shrug the Akimichi gives in response.

Kagami takes a deep breath, releases it, and relaxes his hold on his grandson. He doesn’t let go of him entirely, though, keeps a hand on his shoulder as he turns to face the rest of the room.

“I believe Danzo used the eye he stole from Shisui and put us under Kotoamatsukami shortly before the massacre.” He states, voice bristling with barely restrained fury.

“Log…” Koharu lets out, horrified. “That means…”

“That all of us were under the influence of the most insidious and subtle genjutsu my clan ever produced when we  _ let _ Danzo get away with ordering the  _ massacre  _ of one of the founding clans of this village” Kagami finishes for her. “When  _ I  _  let him get away with trying to kill my grandson and exterminating my entire fucking clan.”

Under his hand, Shisui is shaking.

“I… my eye?” He whispers, one hand pressing on the empty space where his left eye had been. “He used my…”

“I don’t know for certain yet, and I won’t until we interrogate the bastard.” Kagami admits grimly, squeezing Shisui’s shoulder gently. “But given the circumstances, it does seems the most likely reason for none of us to have killed him yet. Log knows I wanted to after what he did to you.”

Koharu looks ready to kill Danzo too, but no one will take this kill from him. Except maybe Shisui, and even then the young man hasn’t suffered through the sheer betrayal that Kagami has, had never been as close to Shimura Danzo as he had, had never counted the man as one of his best friends. Torifu won’t interfere - it wasn’t his clan Danzo destroyed. 

Danzo’s life belongs to Kagami now, even if Saru will be the one to order the sentence for legal reasons.

Homura just looks sick, and Jiraya is not much better. The first Hokage’s face is somber, but he remains silent. This is not his fight, for all that he can remember Danzo as a child, he has not known the man he has become. Tobirama is trying to catch his eyes, but Kagami ignores him as his gaze is fixed on the one person in the room who will decide what happens now.

Saru’s face is set in stone when he speaks.

“Then let us proceed with the interrogation.”


End file.
